Yellow pitcher plant is found from southern Alabama, through Florida and Georgia, to the coastal plains of southern Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. It grows in wet savannas and pine flatwoods, seepage slopes, and bogs.
Yellow pitcher plant also called as Sarracenia flava, is a carnivorous plant of the genus Sarracenia. This species was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.
IDENTIFY YELLOW PITCHER PLANT - SARRACENIA FLAVA
Yellow pitcher plant is found from southern Alabama, through Florida and Georgia, to the coastal plains of southern Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. It grows in wet savannas and pine flatwoods, seepage slopes, and bogs.
Sarracenia flava is a perennial herb with leaves modified into erect, tubular pitchers which are 25 - 95 cm tall, bright yellow, narrow at the base and widening to an opening partially covered by a hood; the narrow neck at the base of the hood is usually dark red; pitchers do not overwinter. Flat, curved, non-pitcher leaves, 12 - 30 cm tall develop after flowering and persist through the winter.
These plants capture and digest insects and other small animals in their pitchers. Nectar is produced by glands around the top of the pitcher, luring animals to the opening with its sweet smell. Stiff, down-pointing hairs line the pitcher, encouraging animals to slide in and then impeding their escape. The red veins and neck on the pitchers of Yellow pitcher plants attract insects and direct them into the pitcher. Enzymes dissolved in water in the base of the pitcher digest the animals, making nutrients, particularly nitrogen, available for absorption by the plant.
This carnivorous plant blooms in spring. Flower solitary with 5 drooping, bright yellow petals, 5 - 8.5 cm long; 5 yellow green sepals; and a yellow-green, umbrella-shaped style disk in the center of the flower. Sepals and style disk persist long after the petals fall, and the fruit – a round, warty capsule about 1.5 - 2 cm wide – develops.
Some varieties of this species: Sarracenia flava var. rugelii (large red spots under the hood and no veins); Sarracenia flava var. cuprea (the operculum and the upper part of the pitcher have a coppery red coloring with important red veins all along the pitcher); Sarracenia flava f. green (no red pigmentation on the pitchers, although phyllodes may have slight red hues); Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora (the outside of the tube is dark red, while the lip, throat, and operculum are green with red veins); Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea (a large part of the operculum is reddish); Sarracenia flava 'Claret' (tinged with brown with important red veins); Sarracenia flava 'Marston dwarf' (tufts of strongly veined pitchers that are no more than 50 cm high).
YELLOW PITCHER PLANT - SARRACENIA FLAVA CARE AND CULTURE
Cultural information should only be used as a guide, and should be to be adapted to suit you. Your physical location; where you grow your plants, how much time you have to devote to their care, and many other factors, will need to be taken into account. Only then can you decide on the cultural methods that best suit you and your plants.
Light and temperature:
Yellow pitcher plant can grow in full sun. The plant need the temperature of between 5 and 15 ° C in winter and 20 to 40 ° C in summer. In summer, the plant can be grown outdoors without problems. But in winter it have to avoid frost. We can keep the plant at higher temperatures, inside a house for example, but we will then take the risk of reducing its life. It can be installed in outdoor peat bogs because it can withstand temperatures of -12 ° C.
In winter, an atmosphere that is too dry and too hot can encourage an invasion of mealybugs . The accumulation of insects in the pitchers often leads to leaf mold in winter. You need cut the affected leaves to prevent spread to the entire plant. To avoid this risk many people cut all leaves at the beginning of winter.
Substrate, growing media and repotting:
Sarracenia flava is best grown in the consistently moist soils of a bog garden. Plants may also be grown in pots/containers (plastic best) placed outside on a sunny deck or patio area. Container soils can be 70% blonde peat + 20% sand + 10% vermiculite. Potting soil and/or fertilizer may kill the plant. Containers should be placed in a tray of water that keeps the soil constantly moist Due to the size of the plant use a pot of 13 cm minimum. A pot too small will prevent it from developing normally. Repotting will take place in spring until early summer.
Watering:
Use mineral-free water or water low in minerals. Keep the soil moist all year long, but plant crowns should not sit for prolonged periods in water. You can use a saucer under the pot, and reduce and remove it in winter. Plants need full sun in the growing season and cold temperatures in winter dormancy.
Feeding:
Do not fertilize the plants. Kept outside, the plant will catch more than enough food for themselves. If you keep your plants indoors, you can feed them with dried insects every few weeks.
Propagation:
If in the nature the production of seeds is important, it is not the same in culture. Pollination occurs only rarely, probably due to lack of pollinating insects. It can be tempted naturally by taking the pollen of a flower with a brush and placing it on the stigma of another flower. If all goes well, we will get about a hundred seeds in late summer. To germinate these will need to undergo stratification . It will be necessary to sow them from the beginning of March, in a container containing a mixture of peat and sand packed and well humidified. The seeds will just be covered with a thin layer of sifted peat. The whole will be placed in the refrigerator for two to three weeks to undergo cooling. After this stratification, the seedbed will be returned to normal temperature at about 20 °C. The germination is long enough it will take sometimes more than two months. When the plants are strong enough to be handled they can be replanted in small pots with the same compost as the adult plants. This mode of reproduction would be ideal if the germination was not so capricious. Moreover, in the first years, the growth of Sarracenia flava is very slow.
Division is also possible for Yellow pitcher plant. Once a plant is well established it produces at its foot releases that we can separate in the spring. We will detach the rejection with a tool very sharp and clean, it will be necessary to dig up the plant slightly. The recovery will be no problem if the rejection has good roots. This operation can be done during a repotting of the plant.
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