The first Sarracenia flowers open for 2015!

The Sarracenia bogs burst into life while we were away on holidays! This season will see a bumper number of flowers.

14 October marks the date of the first fully open Sarracenia flower in the bog gardens. It was of course a Sarracenia flava, this year the David Martin var. flava clone called F1. It produces robust pitchers.

The first pitcher open looks set to be S. flava var. rubrocorpora, a robust clone from Phil Reytter. The traps look like they will be around 50 cm tall, give or take.

In another few weeks, the bog gardens should be ablaze with dozens of flowers all open at once. I will post more photos soon.

The first signs of spring, 2011

Finally, a chance to write my blog again! July has disappeared with work commitments, so I'm grateful to finally settle back into a more gentle rhythmn. Its deepest wintere here, and here is the view from our backyard to the Brindabella Ranges, 30 kilometers to the southwest. It stayed on the ground for a good week after I took this photo, with the last of it melting on 20 July. There is still snow on Mount Bimberi, the highest peak in the Australian Capital Territory, as I write this.

The Brindabella Ranges with freshly fallen snow. Left to right are Mount Gingera, Mt. Ginini and Mt. Franklin. The Drosera peltata site I visit is in the hills below Mount Ginini at Smoker's Gap (not visible).

Sarracenia flava var. flava - ex Triffid Park

Data at a glance...
Latin name                           Sarracenia flava var. flava
Clone name                          Triffid Park var. flava
Acquired                               2009, ex Triffid Park open day
Pitcher flush pattern            Many: many: P (Sp: Su: Au) 
Growth strength                   Strong
Division types                      Flower and rhizome division noted

This rather magnificent plant is considered by some to be a S. flava var. rugellii, but because the red throat blotch extends onto the hood as veins, it is properly a S. flava var. flava. Even so, the intensity and coverage of the throat blotch is simply remarkable. Emphasising these features is the truly narrow throat that makes this plant just so beautiful. It is also a very good grower that, once settled in, splits reliably and puts on a good show of pitchers through all of spring and summer. The photos above are of the plant in spring 2010, but its rhizome swelled from all the insects caught during summer and is now twice the size shown above. It should look magnificent this spring!

Just a couple of more flava photos...

Been too busy with things - work, gardening, admiring the plants - and neglecting the blog. Went up to Sydney the other weekend and added another two plants to the collection - a nice veined flava var. cuprea and a different clone of flava var. rugelli from Jessica Biddlecombe - thanks Jessica! Both have been repotted and are settling in well. Also added a misting system to the hothouse to try and keep temperatures in check.

I also finally managed to get into town during lunch and got a new hard drive, so photo storage is now much easier. Here are a couple more photos, with a promise of more to come.

This is probably the best S. flava var. flava I have. It has some sentimental value, as I brought it at the ICPS conference in Sydney, 2008. It was grown from seed by Greg Bourke of Captive Exotics fame, and then donated to the Sydney Botanic Gardens for their displays. The gardens then sold cuttings during the conference, of which this piece was the best. The lid venation is really quite unique.

This plant is a nice Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora - often referred to as a flava red tube. What makes this particular plant special is the lid, which reddens as the season progresses. This photo was taken a couple of weekends back, and it has reddened further since. Last year, the entire lid became almost solid red. This is its second season in my collection, and it is about 40 cm tall. It will be redder than this next year - it is half sulking because it was repotted a couple of months back. Still, it got some red to it, which is not always the case with var. rubricorpora that have just been repotted, so I should not complain.

More to come soon - next installment will be some interesting flava var. cuprea from Gotcha! Plants...