Sarracenia in Bloom

It's been about a month and a half since the Sarracenia plants finished their winter nap in cold storage, and many of them are flowering. This one is Sarracenia flava, the Yellow Pitcher Plant, a carnivore native to the southeastern United States from Virginia to Florida. The particular form in the photo, without any red markings around the pitcher mouths, is relatively common in the Carolinas, according to Donald Schnell in Carnivorous Plants of the United States and Canada.

Sarracenia flava is an imposing thing, as carnivorous plants go, and this one has leaves about 25 inches (64 cm) tall. When it is placed outside in the summer, the pitchers fill up almost to their tops with trapped flies, wasps and yellow jackets.

Connecticut Cactus & Succulent Show

Conophytum plants, starting to go dormant.

This weekend is the Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society's annual show and sale, at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury. The show is always a good time, and totally free of charge, apart from whatever you might be tempted into spending at the vendors or the auction. I'll be giving a short talk about living stones (such as Lithops and Conophytum) on Saturday at 3:15. Maybe I'll see some of you there!

Spring, This Time for Real

Flower shows in February are nice, but actual spring weather has now arrived outside in Connecticut. This is the Snow Crocus, Crocus tommasinianus, always one of the first spring flowers.

There was no shortage of honeybees around the flowers a little later in the day. Meanwhile, back inside the greenhouse, conophytums and other winter-growing succulents are looking bedraggled and ready for their summer dormancy.

Century Plant Seedlings: 99 Years 11 Months to Go

Agave filifera ssp. shidigera seedlings. Can you spot the aphid, which I didn't notice until after I downloaded the photo?

Last fall I wrote about the blooming of the Agave filifera ssp. schidigera plant in the University of Connecticut greenhouses. At the time, I was a little doubtful that I would get any seeds from the plant, since I did not have another individual available with which to cross pollinate it. However, I did attempt to self pollinate some of the flowers. It turns out that I needn't have worried: the Century Plant produced hundreds of fruits, even from flowers that I didn't physically pollinate.

The university's A. filifera didn't seem to be completely self-fertile; most of the seeds were small, white, and didn't germinate. But, each capsule contained a dozen viable, well-formed black seeds, so there was more than enough material to replace the parent plant, now in its terminal decline.

Ripe Agave filifera ssp. shidigera fruits.

I harvested and planted the seeds as soon as the fruits started to dry out and open, about four months after flowering. The seeds were sown in ordinary cactus and succulent mix (2 peat-based potting mix : 2 sand : 1 pumice : 1 Turface, more or less), lightly covered with course sand, placed in a sunny spot and kept moist. The seedlings emerged within a week, and a month or so later, are starting to produce their first foliage leaves.

The seedlings ought to be quite recognizable as little agaves by the end of the summer. It won't literally take 100 years for them to reach flowering size, though it is likely to be decades before the next generation of A. filifera plants blooms at UConn.

Spring is Here, Oh, Spring is Here

...Life is skittles, and life is beer, at least in the Hartford Convention Center. The Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut held the Connecticut Flower & Garden Show this past weekend. I was there on Saturday to answer questions at the display from the UConn EEB Plant Growth Facility, and there was a steady stream of people, and the word was that it was difficult to even find a parking space by early afternoon. Things were busy, but I did take some time to do some photography.

Here's the display from the UConn greenhouses. It's a bit heavy on succulent plants and carnivorous plants. No messing around with arborvitaes and forced tulips for us.

Next door to the greenhouse table was Cheri C. from the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, with an educational exhibit on plants that are sources of fibers. Did you know that course fibers useful for rope making can be extracted from Sansevieria, the omnipresent potted Snake Plant?

The Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society also had a booth in the educational exhibit section of the show, here manned by longtime CCSS-er Sully. The next big event for the CCSS is their annual show the first weekend in April, in Waterbury.

Out on the main floor, the New England Carnivorous Plant Society had a booth. Shaun M. and Wild Bill could barely keep up with the hordes of budding flytrap enthusiasts asking questions about the miniature garden of terror the NECPS had set up.

The numerous vendors included Judy B. of Lauray of Salisbury, with an eclectic selection of succulents, orchids and gesneriads.

Black Jungle also had a big presence. This was their first year at the Hartford Flower Show, but it seemed like they were keeping busy. In past years, commercial sources of carnivorous plants had been few and far between at the show, so I'm sure there was some pent up demand.

I didn't get many photos of the garden installations, but I really liked this one from the Connecticut Horticultural Society, who put together a charming mockup of an urban garden complete with vegetable patch and compost bin.