I remember Peter D'Amato writing an article(s) about CP torture years ago in the Carnivorous Plant Newsletter, trying to determine how cold-hardy, heat-hardy, etc. CP can be. With that in mind, I thought I'd post the occasional horror story and/or warning by example from my own experience.
Today's inaugural episode:
Q: How do you know when you've left your Sarracenia too long in their pots?
A: When they look like this:
This poor plant is from the Georgia population of S. leucophylla, courtesy of Atlanta Botanic Gardens via the Chattahoochee Nature Center. It has been sitting (suffering) in a 5" square pot since 2005.
As you can see, when the growing point (or points) reaches the edge of the pot, if it can't break through (and plants in this condition often do, particularly when the pots have started to degrade and become brittle in the sun), they grow sideways, and then eventually down. In the worst examples (yes, this is not the worst I've seen in my collection), the leaves grow entirely downward, looking more like roots than anything else.
In many cases these growing points will die off, and the plant will put up a crop of new growing points along the back of the rhizome. Or the plant will just give up and die completely.
The good news is that even plants in this condition can be salvaged through division and repotting (placing rhizome divisions in bizarre orientations in the new pot so that the mis-directed crowns are pointed at least roughly in the right direction).
There is even a happy ending for this plant. It is doing fine after some surgery yesterday: Several large divisions now happily situated in gallon round pots (my standard) and a multitude of small divisions in my extras bed.
Today's inaugural episode:
Q: How do you know when you've left your Sarracenia too long in their pots?
A: When they look like this:
This poor plant is from the Georgia population of S. leucophylla, courtesy of Atlanta Botanic Gardens via the Chattahoochee Nature Center. It has been sitting (suffering) in a 5" square pot since 2005.
As you can see, when the growing point (or points) reaches the edge of the pot, if it can't break through (and plants in this condition often do, particularly when the pots have started to degrade and become brittle in the sun), they grow sideways, and then eventually down. In the worst examples (yes, this is not the worst I've seen in my collection), the leaves grow entirely downward, looking more like roots than anything else.
In many cases these growing points will die off, and the plant will put up a crop of new growing points along the back of the rhizome. Or the plant will just give up and die completely.
The good news is that even plants in this condition can be salvaged through division and repotting (placing rhizome divisions in bizarre orientations in the new pot so that the mis-directed crowns are pointed at least roughly in the right direction).
There is even a happy ending for this plant. It is doing fine after some surgery yesterday: Several large divisions now happily situated in gallon round pots (my standard) and a multitude of small divisions in my extras bed.
