Red and green seem to be the predominant colors these days. Instead, how about a shot of hot magenta-pink against green? Of all my pitcher plants this season Sarracenia Daina’s Delight is probably looking the best of any of them.
Vivid colors aren’t the rule this late in the season, with brown being the increasingly prevalent shade. With fewer things like color to distract you it’s a good time of year to concentrate on the amazing shapes these pitchers assume. In their brown state it’s easier to see the little hairs on the leaves that direct the insects down into digestive juices.
For you color addicts there’s still a bit of color left. This species is Sarracenia rubra var. wherryi (a.k.a. S. alabamensis var. wherryi.)
And for you color addicts who like a more traditional red and green combo, could you do any better than this? It’s a cross nicknamed ‘W.C.’ by Jerry Addington after Karen Oudean’s Willow Creek Nursery, in honor of Karen bestowing on him this clone of the hybrid of S. (psittacina x rubra) x leucophylla.
Hmmm…how about a cross between Daina’s Delight and W.C. for gorgeous late season color and awesome patterning? If they both bloom next spring I just might have to make that cross and find out…
That WC is lovely. Are these tropical…what zone? I’m 7 and it gets down to 20 in winter.
Sue, the genus Sarracenia is generally described as being zone 5 to 9 plants, so your Sierra temps would be fine. One subspecies (S. purpurea ssp. purpurea) has populations into the Canadian rockies and is described down to Zone 2. In fact they generally require winter dormancy, and I worry that my usually zone 10 garden is too warm. But so far so good. Are you familiar with the Cal native Darlingtonia californica? It’s a seriously cool pitcher plant, but notoriously more difficult to keep happy than the sarracenia. There are some populations in the Sierra foothills quite a ways north of you, so you might stand a chance to do okay with it. The big requirement for all of these is pure water, and lots of it.
Hmmm. That’s nice to know. I do have a seasonal stream(my husband calls it a drainage ditch, the stinker), but it gets real mossy in the winter and is wet in areas all year. I would like to look into the native pitcher plants I could possibly grow here, and really appreciate all your posts on them. I’ll look them up, too!
Wow – your pitcher plants are so intriguing. They look like a cross between a toad lily and Calla lily growing somewhere in backwoods of Alice in Wonderland.
Those are some pretty fascinating flowers.
I really like the first photo! great colors and composition!