RE: brief intro; Sarracenias

From: Mellard, David (dam7@cdc.gov)
Date: Mon Apr 20 1998 - 06:30:00 PDT


Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 09:30:00 -0400
From: "Mellard, David" <dam7@cdc.gov>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg1322$foo@default>
Subject: RE: brief intro; Sarracenias


>My question: Does anyone else on the list grow Sarracenias outdoors in
bog
>conditions? I would be interested in corresponding and sharing ideas
about
>bog culture. Being relatively new to the list, I'm not sure whether it
>would be more appropriate to respond to me privately rather than
through
>the list. I hope to hear from some of you!

Hi Dustin,

I now have 8 bogs outdoors, and, while like you I find all cp's
fascinating, I concentrate on Sarracenias.

I visited my mother in Summerville, SC, this past weekend and had a
wonderful time stealing away at dawn while every slept and visiting my
favorite cp haunts. I found my first Pinguicula caerula (spelling?)
simply because my visit corresponded to its bloom time. Otherwise, it
was lost in deep grass cover.

Summerville is a small town, maybe 10,000 to 20,000 people now. A
generation ago it was 4,000 when I was growing up there. All that means
that businesses and homes are expanding into the surrounding forests and
fields. The pine forests are logged as they mature and much of the
surrounding area is fairly open hunting preserves. The logging is
somewhat of a mixed blessing because the periodic logging, while
destroying the soil surface, opens up large tracts of land. Because
Summerville is about 20 miles inland, the depth to groundwater in many
areas is anywhere from zero inches (we call that a swamp) to a handful
of inches. It's very easy to find D. capillaris and to a lesser extent
intermedia. I have to search a bit to find Sarracenia flava and Sarr
minor is fairly common.

Since you're a conservation biologist, you (and others on the list)
might find one of my projects of interst. I dug up (I know, gasp!) a
Sarracenia flava last fall from a maturing pine forest. It was in sad
shape because the undergrowth was so heavy that the pitchers were long
and lanky. I cut the rhizomes into sections, and the emerging pitchers
this spring are nowing sprouting in my bogs. This fall, I will
transplant the newly formed plants into a recently cleared pine forest
in Summerville. The flavas will have been moved a few hundred yards. I
was thinking of doing the same with S. minor but haven't found one in a
precarious location. I'm also sprouting seed that I'll also transplant
to some of these recently cleared areas.

For those who are genetic purist, please realize that I do not plan to
introduce Sarr from far away locations or non-native cp's. I am
focusing on helping out the local population and use either local Sarr
or seed collected from local Sarr. The plants will go into cleared
forests where no Sarr exist but where I find D. capillaris, a clue that
the water conditions are right for cp's.

Dustin, if you get responses about Sarr and outdoor bogs, please keep
them on the list. We all learn this way.

David



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