Last year there was this one cross I almost forgot about until I stumbled upon it during clean up. Yeah! I just love it when that happens! It was S. “Green Monster” x alata f. viridescens (the anthocyanin free form of S. alata). You can see last year’s pitchers in this post. This year a little bit more character can be seen in the plant. I really like how it has been developing. I enjoy how the windows from S. “Green Monster” are combined with the bulbous shape in the upper portion of the pitcher thanks to the S. alata f. viridescens influence. It is still not of blooming age yet; perhaps it will be next year or the year after. This particular plant is one of the larger ones from the litter. The other siblings look similar and are a little smaller. I’m grading those babies out and hoping for some nice surprises from the batch!

Sarracenia “Green Monster” x alata AF

Sarracenia “Green Monster” x alata AF

A young plant from a cross I did some years ago. Not of blooming age yet. The mother/pod parent plant – Sarracenia (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. rubricorpora) – is a fantastic red moorei bred by Phil Faulisi. There are some interesting variations going on with the siblings, and I’ll post some photos later on in the season. For now here’s one of the larger plants from the bunch. There’s some great coloration going on right now with this one.

***

Sarracenia (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. rubricorpora) x ‘Adrian Slack’

Sarracenia (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. rubricorpora) x ‘Adrian Slack’

Sarracenia flava var. ornata – Bulloch Co., GA
A couple of recently opened pitchers from this stylish S. flava. The veins make this plant appear as if it is sporting some pin stripes! Those veins also will get darker as the season progresses.

Here’s a really striking cross that was done by Mike Wang. There’s a few beauties that resulted from this crossing such as Mike’s select clone S. “Elaine Wang.” I’ll post a few more photos of the siblings of the below plant once their pitchers are open. This particular one started the season off with a bang! Great work, Mike!

Sarracenia ‘Adrian Slack’ x ‘Judith Hindle’

Sarracenia ‘Adrian Slack’ x ‘Judith Hindle’

Sarracenia ‘Adrian Slack’ x ‘Judith Hindle’

Hey everyone out there in the interwebs! Hope you’ve been well! Miss you all. It’s been a couple weeks since my last update, but oh boy… do I have some updates coming up. Thanks for being patient with me and thank you for still checking in on my blog. You’re awesome.

So last week my brotha’ from another mutha’ – Kinjie Coe, came down to visit for the weekend. For those of you who don’t know, Kinjie hails from Portland, OR and is an absolutely friquin’ brilliant carnivorous plant grower. We had a marvelous time connecting and spending time with local growers. (Allison and Siri, thank you for letting Kinjie visit and get his super-carnivorous-plant-nerd-out on with the rest of us!)

I’ll be posting a few snapshots from each day of his visit in the upcoming blog posts. I’ve actually never had *this much* carnivorous plant collection surfing crammed into one weekend. Yeah. It was glorious.

Day one – Friday 10 Apr 2015. We cruised on over to visit the legend – Phil Faulisi. Phil needs no introduction and he is one badass breeder and grower. Phil – thank you so much for everything bro. Always good to kick it with you and many thanks for your hospitality and generosity. (BACON!)

Without further ado – slideshow photos from the master’s garden as well as a few photos in the highlight reel below!

***

View full screen slideshow here!

Plant life. Ain’t nothin’ but a G(ardener) thang.

Tools of the artist.

The beast. Sarracenia “Saurus”

Whatta bunch ah crazies all up in this joint. We be getting that Sarracenia high.

Collection surfing – Day 2, the journey continues! [See prior day, Day 1 – Phil Faulisi’s mindmelting garden.] For day 2 we would continue with our carnivorous plant campaign at California Carnivores where Chi’en C. Lee was presenting on his travels throughout South East Asia. Goodness. To be surrounded by carnivorous plants AND listen to Chi’en present in person on the flora and fauna of South East Asia was most excellent! His talk was fascinating and it was very inspirational. Makes me want to get out there and travel/photograph a bit more!  Additionally there were so many fellow carniphiles that showed up at CalCarn; it was absolutely brilliant meeting and connecting with all of you wonderful people that were there!

After CalCarn – Kinjie, Calen and I trekked over to Mike Wang’s place. Yeah! Over at Mike’s place – this was pretty much our reaction throughout the entire time we were there. (Click that link.) We got to Mike’s place as the day was ending but that definitely did not stop these plant nerds from trippin’ out over plants ’till 11pm. No light in the garden? No problem. We bust out the flashlights and continued to get our botanical geekery on. Nightshift status. (Good times, bros… good times.)

***

California Carnivores  – View in full screen

Mike Wang’s Crops – View in full screen

***

Obligitory bridge shot. Crossed en route to CalCarn.

We up in this.

Calen and Damon

Left to Right: Kinjie, Peter, Calen, some weird guy, and Damon
(Thanks for taking the photo, David!)

Aww yeah! Selfie with Peter D’amato!

(A blurry) selfie with Chi’en, Kinjie and Calen. I was probably on a bit of a botanical high or something at the time of this photo.

Left to Right: Calen, Mike, Kate, Kinjie and I

***

Crops of Wang.

I think Calen’s phone was dead in this photo and that he was just pretending to take a photo for this shot. (Heh heh! Just messin’ with you Calen. But you gotta make sure your phone is charged next time, bro. )

Check out the throat spotch on this baby!

Man, these Flava cupreas — so choclate-y!

The Wangster admires a beautiful pink excellens.

Carnivorous plant geeks in effect.

Sarracenia “Elaine Wang”

Nightshift.

Light ‘em up! (Playing around with the wireless flash…)

Scene without the camera flash…

… and scene WITH flash.

Crops by night.

The final installment of this trilogy of vignettes takes to the wonderful garden of Martinez. Drew’s collection is beautiful madness, and his space usage (especially in the Nepenthes houses) is very efficient. As an added bonus, the great Sarracenia artist himself, the legend — Phil Faulisi accompanied us on this visit to Drew’s place too! We had a great day simply immersing ourself in botanical bliss. This was one memorable weekend filled with carnivorous plant wonder. I seriously could use more weekends like this.

Drew and Selina, thank you so much for hosting us. Really appreciate you taking time out of your day to give us a tour of your amazing collection! You both are awesome.

***

Carnivorous Garden of Drew Martinez – View in fullscreen

***

Pitcher plant powwow.

A plethora of Sarracenia flowers.

In that company of Sarracenia flowers, a couple gems stood out. This S. purpurea ssp. venosa var. burkii f. luteola immediately caught my eye. Not just because it was anthocyanin free, but check the flowers out. It’s missing the umbrella shaped style! (See this as a reference of Sarracenia flower parts.) So weird! All the flowers on it were this way. After I pointed it out, Drew called it “Freakshow.” So cool. I love them freaks! This plant originated from a batch of seed grown plants from Chris Gussman. (Great work, Chris!) I recognized the shape and knew straight away it was from Chris since I have one too. Mine hasn’t bloomed yet so not sure if this trait is also expressed in the siblings.

Here’s a shot of one of the flowers from that strange luteola…

…and of the other flower. If you see past the petals, there’s no umbrella! Go home, Sarracenia. You are drunk.

Another flower that caught my eye after the strange luteola flower. This is S. lamentations x leucophylla. Notice anything funny about this one? Check the sepals out! (Again, here’s the Sarracenia flower reference photo.) Typically Sarracenia sepals are separated into 5 distinct sepals. This plant has only one fused / continuous sepal. It was consistent on all of the flowers too!

An ever-so efficient use of space. It’s packed in here!

Phil freaks out over this beautiful N. robcantleyi!

WOW. Just… wow.

Greetings to all of you wonderful people out there! Things in the Asylum are moving along quite quickly. I did manage to repot and clean up a majority of the adult plants this year. That was an ominous undertaking but glad to report that was completed. Because of this, I did not work on too many crosses this year. Honestly around 10-15 or so crosses is all I did as my efforts were concentrated on cleaning up. One ongoing project I an working on this year is simply cleaning and repotting the juvenile plants.

Here’s a few shots of the various tables. Yeah, they are a friggin’ mess. I know. Not everything is pretty in The Asylum. In this mess, however,  there are a few neat little gems to be found.

A few of the juveniles freshly potted up!

The table that is slowly filling up back to front with the the new babies. There is a lot to look forward to in the coming seasons!

Just a few Sarracenia flavas, for fun. Enjoy!

The flava section

Sarracenia flava ‘Waccamaw’

Sarracenia flava “Powhatan”

Sarracenia flava var. autropurpurea

Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora

Sarracenia flava “Killer”

Sarracenia flava var. ornata – tall clone

Sarracenia flava “Extreme Red Throat” – a seed grown plant from Mike Wang, similar markings to S. flava “Killer.”

Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora “lidless”

Sarracenia flava var. ornata “lidless”

Her majesty – Sarracenia ‘Royal Ruby‘

A couple of years ago, I put together a bog garden using an old sink my uncle was going to throw out. [Here’s the sink from when I first pout it together in 2013.] The sink has filled in quite nicely since then and here’s how it’s doing now. I seriously need to get a tub/shower or maybe even a toilet bog going next.

Bog sink

Bog sink, flanked with Tillandsias and fern.

Not sure what hybrid I threw in there, but I like the pattern and contrast.

Sarracenia oreophila x ‘Adrian Slack’ – one of my crosses from a few years ago. This year I finally got a chance to put each clone in a separate pot to keep track of them easier. I’ll eventually figure out a naming convention, but wanted to share this one for now. More photos to follow of the others later on. This particular plant has a beautiful red throat splotch contrasting against a white pitcher top. Hawt!

Growing in a greenhouse has some advantages and disadvantages. One thing that I miss about growing outdoors is that my plants don’t feast on bugs as much compared to when I was growing outdoors. Now – I do leave my vents open, and insects do manage to find their way in. So my plants do eat — a little bit. I will be playing around this season with fertilizer as a supplement (like MaxSea…) but in the meantime I wanted to try something else this year. I thought it would be fun to let the plants do what they were meant to do. Catch their own food! A huge special shout out to Scott Creary, Entomologist of IPM Labs (http://ipmlabs.com), as well as Ryan Georgia of Native Exotics (http://nativeexoticsonline.com/) for introducing us. Thanks guys! I had contacted Scott and purchased about 10k fly pupae. Yeah. Ten. Thousand. Fly. Pupae. Yummy! A nice little box arrived and this is what was inside:

10,000 fly pupae. In a beautiful green mesh bag. Brilliant presentation!

OMG!!!

I just placed the pupae on small trays all around the greenhouse and over the course of the week, they eventually emerged. And eventually got eaten. I only go to the greenhouse a couple times a week, so I wasn’t there to witness the flies emerge. Yes, I did notice more flies in the greenhouse, however I knew plants were doing their job as I would find scenes like the below at a much greater frequency that what I am normally used to seeing.

First victim that I saw. Resistance is futile.

Later that week, I noticed early on that the plants were starting to catch prey.
(Reflected as the darker areas in the pitcher base above.)

…And, the Sarracenia were not the only ones having all the fun! The other carnivores were also having some fun too. More traps triggered on the Dionaeas, a few stuck to the Drosophyllum, and the Drosera were also having fun!

Many of the Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ crosses by Dr. Travis H. Wyman have just turned out fantastic and it has been a joy to watch the plants mature from seed over the years. The parent plant, Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ was created by Phil Faulisi, and breeding lines involving Phil’s prodigious reptile have yielded quite fascinating results. I can only imagine where these breeding lines will take us in the coming years. One plant that really catches my eye year after year is Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var. rubricorpora x leucophylla) – clone #15. This plant sends up a beautiful disorderly mass of pitchers with the strong angular influence from Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose.’ This gives the plant a chaotic appearance, hence my (currently working/unofficial) name, Sarracenia “Chaos.” As the season progresses, the coloration will darken and turn to a deep red.

Sarracenia “Chaos”
Parentage: Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var. rubricorpora x leucophylla) – Clone 15
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman

Sarracenia “Chaos”
Parentage: Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var. rubricorpora x leucophylla) – Clone 15
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman

Sarracenia “Chaos”
Parentage: Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var. rubricorpora x leucophylla) – Clone 15
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman

Sarracenia “Chaos” – profile
Parentage: Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var. rubricorpora x leucophylla) – Clone 15
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman

Sarracenia “Chaos”
Detail of chaotic nectar roll.
Parentage: Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var. rubricorpora x leucophylla) – Clone 15
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman

Back on 16 May 2015, I had the pleasure of visiting my bro Kinjie’s garden. This visit was quite the whirlwind weekend in the Pacific North West (PNW.) I managed to see both Kinjie as well as my friend, Derek in a time span of about 24 hours before heading back to the SF Bay Area. This mos’ def was not enough time! Kinjie has a brilliant collection of Sarracenia and I’m honored to have been able to witness his garden in person. (Kinjie, Allison and Siri – thanks for having me over!)

Hope you enjoy a few of these photos from the Garden of Coe!

Garden of Coe – 16 May 2015 – view in full screen.

***

A man and his plants.

Oh Hai!

Sarracenia leucophylla “Burgundy” x flava var. maxima
Cross by James Soe Nuyn
Quite the lovely color palette on this plant. Great work, James!

Things in The Asylum are still moving along. One area of the greenhouse that I am constantly battling is this mess. I’ve jokingly been saying the seedlings are in “self culling mode.” (Well, maybe I am not so joking about it.) I say this because the strongest continue to grow out while the weak ones just seem to self-compost.

The mess.
***
There are so many young plants in this pile o’ foliage that have some great potential. Here are just a few from the fray that I’m feelin’. So many more gems in this mess. Stay tuned as those will be included in future updates.
Sarracenia (rubra spp. jonesii AF x minor var. okefenokeensis) x ‘Scarlett Belle’
Cross by Jerry Addington

Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’ – Clone F x ‘Adrian Slack’
Cross by Co

Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’ – Clone F x ‘Adrian Slack’
Cross by Co

Sarracenia “Blood Moon” x (‘Leah Wilkerson’ x ‘Wilkerson’s Red’)
Cross by Brooks Garcia

Sarracenia moorei “John David King” x (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. cuprea)
Cross by Cédric Azais

Sarracenia (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. cuprea) x moorei “Timothy King”
Cross by Cédric Azais

Sarracenia ‘Jessica’ x (leucophylla “red” x purpurea heterophylla #1)
Cross by Jerry Addington

Sarracenia (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. rubricorpora) x ‘Alucard’ “Prince of Darkness”
Cross by Co

 Sarracenia leucophylla – Franklin Co., clones A x B x ? It’s one of those lost label pollinations. (ARGH!)

Sarracenia “Big catesbaei” x “Pride” – Two diffrent siblings.
Cross by Jerry Addington

Earlier this month my carni-bro Kinjie and I had the pleasure of visiting Jerry Addington. (Ron, great seeing you too!) It is always an honor and a joy spending time with Jerry. No matter how much time I spend there –  I simply can not comprehend the amount of botanical beauty and badassery that is present. I won’t even try to describe it – so hope you enjoy a few photos from this visit!

Highlight photo reel in the post below, full photo set in the slideshow. Check out the full Screen slideshow here.) Enjoy!

And Jerry – as always, thank you for your generosity and kindness. Thank you for being an inspiration to me and to so many others. You’re awesome man.

***

(Full Screen slideshow here.)
***

Jerry. And that shirt tho.

 Trophy house.

Kinjie and Ron admiring the plants.

 5:37 AM at Jerry’s. Beauty.

 Kinjie in effect.

Ugh. I just love this leuco! Short stubby lid, and it’s pubescent!

 This one is for you, Jenn.

Sarracenia on the road – Mt. Shasta in the back ground!

Had to share this shot. On the road back home, we were in Shasta County somewhere. It was 107°F and the sky was falling.

 #SelfiesWithJerry!

Hello all you beautiful people! Yeahhh, I know — It seems like it has forever since I’ve posted anything here. Yeah, things have been pretty busy outside of the garden the past couple of months but rest assured I still make time to go down and recharge my soul in The Asylum. The plants are all still doing good, but it’s that weird in-between time for me now. Spring pitchers already are burning out (thanks to my early season start) and pitchers of the autumn-indulging plants are just starting to form. Anyway – here’s a quick and dirty photo-update-reel from the past few weeks.

***

Sarracenia oreophila – for the most part the spring pitchers are gone. Still a pitcher here and there looking ok.

Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’ – clone F x ‘Adrian Slack’ I had this one seriously cramped pot of of these seedlings and repotted those seedlings into these four trays. You can see the old foliage all floppy n’ crud but they’re all throwing up new pitchers. Should be a pretty interesting cross.

Sarracenia leucophylla “Purple Lips” x leucophylla “Mesa Exotics”
Cross by Phil Faulisi

Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’ – Clone F

Sarracenia leucophylla “Helmut’s Delight”

Sarracenia lecuophylla ‘Bris’

Sarracenia minor var. okefenokeensis – Ware Co., GA

Sarracenia flava var. autropurprea

Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora – lidless

Sarracenia flava var. ornata – lidless

Sarracenia flava

Sarracenia flava “Extreme Red Throat”

FREAKIN’… THANK YOU ERIC!! So not that long ago a really awesome surprise came in the mail from Eric Morrow. After a somewhat really bad week for me, this surprise was a huge pick-me-up. By the way – check out Eric’s Instagram feed for some Sarracenia-heavy updates: @sarraceniacrazy!

Sarracenia (‘Leah Wilkerson’ x oreophila) x (flava var. rubricorpora x leucophylla)
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman
In my clean up of plants this year, I was glad to have found this baby barely surviving. I salvaged what I could and glad it’s recovering nicely!

Sarracenia ‘Royal Ruby’

Sarracenia “Blood Moon” – new pitcher unfolding.
Cross by Brooks Garcia

Sarracenia ‘Black Widow’ coloring up.

Sarracenia lecuophylla “burgundy” x flava var. maxima
Cross by James Soe Nyun

DOUBLE HEADER! Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var.rubricorpora x leucophylla)
(Ehh… forgot to note which clone this was…)
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman

Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x (flava var.rubricorpora x leucophylla) – Clone 4
Cross by Dr. Travis H. Wyman

Sarracenia alata – AF

Sarracenia minor – AF

Sarracenia flava AF – Shalotte – Brunswick Co., NC

Sarracenia flava AF – Telogia – Liberty Co., FL
Kinky lip on that pitcher for some reason, heh!

Sarracenia flava ‘Suspicion’

Sarracenia “Green Monster”

Sarracenia “Green Monster” – F2
This one is reflecting a lot of S. leucophylla color influence

Sarracenia moorei AF – parentage: Sarracenia leucophylla AF x flava ‘Suspcion’
Cross by Aidan Selwyn.

Sarracenia “Monster Cat” (“Cat” short for “catesbaei”)
Cross by Jerry Addington.

Sarracenia purpurea “Smurf”

Sarracenia willisii x alata “red/black” from Eric Morrow, Cross by Michael Sprouse.

Sarracenia willisii x alata “red/black” from Eric Morrow, Cross by Michael Sprouse.
Sibling to the plant above.

Another angle of the above Sarracenia willisii x alata “red/black” from Eric Morrow, Cross by Michael Sprouse.

Sarracenia leucophylla “Purple Lips” x (rosea “Big Mama” x leucophylla “Purple Lips”)
Cross by Phil Faulisi

Sarracenia ‘Alucard’ “Prince of Darkness” x alata ‘Night’
A cross I did a few years ago. Had a few of these growing in one pot, and the pot self culled itself. I recently repotted the survivors (strongest of that bunch…) and they’re putting up some promising young pitchers.

Sarracenia (minor x willisii) x purpurea ssp. purpurea) x leucophylla
Another neat little seedling of a cross I did that is reacting well to the repotting from earlier this year.

Sarracenia flava “widemouth” x (leucophylla “red” x minor var. okefenokeensis)

Sarracenia oreophila x ‘Adrian Slack’
I repotted most of these plants into individual pots only this year. They seem to have liked that.

Sarracenia oreophila x ‘Adrian Slack’
Sibling to the one above it. The whole litter has everything in between both of these forms and color schemes. Gotta love the diversity.

Sarracenia oreophila “veined” x ‘Adrian Slack.
S. ‘Legacy’ like!

Sarracenia (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. ornata) x ‘Adrian Slack’

Sarracenia ‘Alucard’ x ‘Adrian Slack’

Sarracenia (oreophila x ‘Royal Ruby’) x ‘Adrian Slack’

Sarracenia ‘Adrian Slack’

Sarracenia ‘Leah Wilkerson’

Sarracenia ‘Legacy’

Here’s one of the more recent crosses I did – Sarracenia leucophylla “Hanrahan” x alata AF. I’m excited about this one because… well… it’s an AF recessive S. areolata and can’t wait to use it in future AF projects. And… it’s fuzzy!

Not a pitcher plant but… sheeyat, I’m loving how this Drosophyllum is doing.

Sarracenia (leucophylla “Purple Lips” x flava var. rubricorpora) x ‘Adrian Slack’
Recent Fall Pitcher
Select Clone from a cross I did a few years ago.