Celia, the purple pitcher hybrid on the right in the first pic, is a weed (the young peach tinted veinless traps can deepen to look like tequila sunrise). Hitchiked her way here in some live moss, is named after Celia in Weeds, 'cause tequila sunrise. She made me very happy by giving me my very first Sarracenia flower bud, which made me super excited, and I thought it would come up before her spring pitchers. Yet, she holds it firmly shut, still, in pic 2. Sigh.
@tippitiwichet flower buds shoot up on tall stalks that hang well above the pitchers (so they don't accidentally eat their pollinators. with that being down in the crown/rhizome still, i think it might be a new pup forming. at this point it doesn't look like a flower bud. The stalks emerge with little balls at the tip that swell as they grow upward then the neck turns down and they open. i had a few abort when it got hot/maybe a bit too dry.
@fernfren I see what you're seeing now, I think. That's not sepals facing each other, but rather a few super tiny leaves playing spoons with each other. Cool, hope it forms a root, looks like it will be easy to divide when it's ready.
@tippitiwichet yeah exactly. i think when you first posted a pic a while back, it was a smooth round nubby-- but those pointy bits there-- them's leaves.
i don't have too much experience dividing sarracenia at my friends' nursery. i mostly divide and pot up the flytraps bc they sell like hotcakes and they practically fall into separate plants at the slightest pull.
sarracenia can get a lil mad about it, so it's best to divide just before dormancy breaks.
@tippitiwichet in fact, i read recently that when you're repotting in the early spring, if you rough up the rhizome a little bit, make some shallow cuts in the top, it'll sprout a new pup from there.
not sure if i'll try that, or want to divide mine any time soon. i just want them to swell into giant happy clumps and fill the bog
@fernfren I did the little pots because I read it recommended elsewhere, and it is indeed excellent to root cuttings in, but hearing a grower didn't have good luck with them puts them in the "experimental" group, and I don't want my mother plants there. So, I went ahead and divided her even though it's a little later than I would have done that, because she's still def in the "burst of growth" phase. I really didn't like how cluttered she was with little phylum, so now she's under the new light.
@fernfren Hmm. Mine are plastic, and the "mesh" part is a long slit, so I might not have that issue. Either way, I'll let the babies root in it (breathes well), and then I'm going to keep half the cuttings in a mesh pot and move the others into a 6", so I can compare them. :)
@tippitiwichet yeah, HFT read abt mesh somewhere too-- maybe same place, idk. but the roots got embedded and tangled in the mesh and made it harder to divide and propagate.
the mesh was also metal-- theirs was anyway-- and when metal corrodes (as it do in wet conditions) it releases salts, which are... less than ideal for our delicate beauties. i'm not really sure what the mesh recommender was on abt, maybe they published too soon in their own experiment.