Pitcher Plants
- White Top Pitcher Plant
The Pitcher Plants
Pitcher plants have very distinctive and effective traps. Some are tall and straight while others are small and close to the ground . They capture insects with their pitchers that lure the victims into a pool of digestive fluid. Once the prey enters the pitcher it is difficult to come back out and it soon reaches the point of no return.
Catching Insects and Other Invertebrae
The pitchers usually have a lid above the opening to the throat. The edge of the pitcher is very slick so it is difficult for the prey to hold on. As they go down the throad of the pitcher there are downward pointing hairs that make it difficult to go back up. At the base of the pitcher is a pool of water and digestive fluid. In the summer a trap will often have a large number of dead and digesting insects supplying nutrients that are missing from the acidic peat bog.
How They Grow
The Sarracenia must have a dormant period in the winter. Without this dormant period you can expect poor pitcher production and growth the following growing season. The rhizome can be divided during the winter in order to propagate the plant. Here in zone 7 Alabama most of mine have a few old pitchers and some dead and dried ones in the winter. Most have “winter leaves”. These look more like leaves than pitchers. Kind of hard to describe but easy to see. Most are fairly cold hardy. Some species are very cold hardy.
Observations
Here in Alabama these are still common in wet once you get close to the gulf coast. On vacations in the area we often visit bogs and nurseries in the area. We took a back road a few years ago and discovered a home on several acres covered with acres of pitcher plants. We got permission to walk thru the fields taking pictures and bending down to see little patches of colorful hybrids. There was a lake with a couple more acres of colorful pitchers on the other side. The owners said they usually burned it off
in the winter. This is part of the natural life cycle of these plants. We visited another bog of about an acre in size near Mobile. The owner said they burned the shrub off the place several years and in the spring a large number of bog plants appeared. He burns off the shub each year and the bog is thriving.