Field report!! Sarracenia, Pinguicula & Drosera

[thez_yo]

So I decided I needed to pick up cave diving, and thus I ended up in Northern Florida. Considering I was already going to be around pitcher plant country, I spent a couple days after my dive classes wandering the swamps. Since I couldn't find anyone else to go hang out in the swamp with me, I decided to go hit up the same places I visited the last time I went on field expedition, mainly Sumatra, Florida in Appalachicola park, the red Drosera filiformis site also in the Florida panhandle, and Splinter Hill Bog in Alabama. I took some videos, because maybe people want to listen to me ramble on Sorry about the smudge in the center of the camera on this Sumatra video. (and I took pics too, of course!)

Off to Sumatra!
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OK, I'll hafta figure out how to stitch these together into a 360..



















Ok, so off to the red filiformis site? No... flooded hahaha! It's good that their water table is tons higher than last time I was there, because they were a couple feet below how much water they should have had, but really this is a little over kill:



There is where the dews should be


other side didn't look better haha




At least I saw a pretty butterfly

 

[thez_yo]

Ok, so up to Alabama:
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The main path after the big gate keeping cars out - not too remarkable..


and then the fun begins!




I think I found maybe 5ish leuco x purp hybrids - I took pictures of all the ones I found


















couldn't focus on the ants, but those are ants!












and I found some dried sphag at the bottom of this tree.. either it hadn't rained in a while, or the water table was a little low






this was such a huge purp, I put my water bottle down for scale










this one didn't look like it was gonna make it..


























just phyllodia in the middle of the field








me!

 

[thez_yo]

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..and I found some interesting prints on my way back out..














So I tried to go to the other Splinter Hill site I was at last time - big mistake. It was dark, squishy/swampy/slippery mud, tons of mosquitos and I think what bit the back of my knees so I couldn't really walk right for a couple days was horse flies, all for going about 20' in. Next time, definitely wear pants, show up at 10am, drench self in 2 kinds of insecticide, and definitely bring a buddy..





nope.. this is the point at which my legs started to hurt/sting/burn from the bites, I slipped on some mud (but luckily didn't fall) and decided 5pm was not the time to give it a go.

At least on my way out, I noticed someone had dumped some passionfruit here a while ago, because there were some nice flowers hanging out:






not sure how long they take to set fruit, but maybe check it out in a few months and you might get a tasty treat?

Hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did!!

 

[Oregoncp]

Great pictures! Thank you for the tour. I love seeing these natural sites.

 

[Plant Mother]

Thanks for sharring! Especially love the passion flower pics

 

[Av8tor1]

simply amazing zu....

 

[Dragoness]

Awesome Pics! I'm in love with S. leucophylla, those pics were gorgeous. If you ever start selling high-quality prints, let me know!

 

[thez_yo]

Thanks!!

Awesome Pics! I'm in love with S. leucophylla, those pics were gorgeous. If you ever start selling high-quality prints, let me know!

You know, I bought a Nikon DSLR to try to do that maybe, but I just couldn't get into it. Maybe because I'm more of an olympus/cannon sorta person, and it was a little bit too much to handle at the time. It might be in my future..

 

[Dragoness]

A better camera than my Nikon Point-n-click was promised to me, so maybe someday, I can take my own, too. In the meantime, I'll settle for drooling at those Leucs. The amount of white on those makes them gorgeous!

Is there a name for that locale? I may have to look into acquiring some for my bog.

 

[thez_yo]

I saw a lot of road signs right when I was just driving in towards the site that said things like Baldwin County, Perdido, and Mobile.. I think those are on a lot of leuco tags. The site in particular is called Splinter Hill Bog, but there's also other plants that are pretty white up top including 'hurricane creek'. There's even threads talking about classifications of whiteness lol ... here's one from icps http://icps.proboards.com/thread/5595

 

[Tacks]

That huge stand of S. flava is breathtaking! It must have been amazing to see in person. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Wire Man]

So many red flavas! I can't believe Mason and I drove right past that site....
Looks like you missed one of the coolest hybrids at Splinter Hill. It's a really introgressed x mitchelliana that almost looks like a x moorei.

 

[jimscott]

Loved the fields of Sarracenias! It's always nice to hear a voice and see a face of our cyber friends!

 

[thez_yo]

Yeah it was pretty awesome

 

[charlie]

Wow!! thanks for the tour!

 

[Dexenthes]

The Pinguicula and Sarracenia have such rich red coloration! Really gorgeous plants that you saw there. Thanks for sharing Zu. Someday I will make it to the south.

 

[thez_yo]

You're welcome - it's really amazing to see the fields in person. The pics look awesome, but actually being there is so awesomely unreal. Video gets closer than pictures, but there's still nothing like actually standing in the fields.