palmerpink

I mentioned in a recent post  that even hybrids of the same species can demonstrate disparate variety. Which is the case with the other cultivar I discovered. Yes; there's another. I could go into how this variety among hybrids should surprise no one, but I'm not here to teach you genetics (poorly). No, I want to talk about my other big cultivar-related excitement: Sarracenia 'Ennui,' or so it's being called for now. I guess it's semiofficial now that I've "announced" it in a blog post. Welp. (My main hesitation in calling it this is that the name may already been claimed. But I think it's an  awesome  name for a plant and peculiarly kind of perfect for this one: It's got this muted glamour that feels not only somehow French but also weirdly existential...?) I found this beauty at Meadowview Biological Research Station . The other half of the main plant can still be found there, by the way, and that nursery has a gorgeous array of o...

So I posted the other day about my rekindled carnivorous plant obsession—I mean, hobby . I mentioned, in passing, that I had "discovered" a possible cultivar, so here's the lowdown on what that means and what I meant. The term "cultivar" is short for "cultivated variety," and signifies that a particular plant is so desirable and interesting that people want exact copies of it rather than simply seed from it. Some famous American pitcher plant (Sarracenia) cultivars include the legendary Adrian Slack , the massive Leah Wilkerson , and the classic  Judith Hindle . Part of how these come about is that, unlike horses x donkeys = mules and certain other hybrids, Sarracenia hybrids aren't sterile and can be crossed and recrossed without limit. Further, random chance can create crazy combinations of genes such that even hybrids between the same species—heck, even the same parents —can demonstrate quite the variety. More on that elsewhere . Dependin...

I recently got back into horticulture after a bad moment of burnout, and wouldn't ya know it, I'm back at it with carnivorous plants! Despite tweeting about it endlessly, I haven't actually explained how or why this started. Back in middle school, I helped my science teacher set up a carnivorous plant display. Nothing elaborate, mind you; a terrarium with a bunch of sphagnum moss and some pitcher plants, a sundew or two, maybe a Venus flytrap? Didn't leave much of an impression, except maybe that they died and that sucked.  shrug . A couple years later, I was in a bog near my grandmother's lake house, when things changed forever. I was in the back end of the canoe, and as my dad pulled the front end out of the water, I glanced to my right and spied, on a stump with some moss, sundews ( Drosera rotundifolia , to be precise). Drosera rotundifolia. Of course I recognized therm instantly—they're hard to mistake, with those the sparkling tentacles an...