FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Ordered: 4/13
Shipped: 4/25
Received: 4/27
Review: Ordered the drosera capensis narrow leaf and random sarracenia hybrid. I requested a white and red colored sarracenia, and I got flava v. cuprea BH x (pvb “mama cass” x typical) which is all red and slightly orange . Both plants came with star moss and utricularia. They were a lot smaller than the small sized pictures on the website and shipping/customer service took a very long time. Overall, I am satisfied with the healthy plants and extra utricularia, but I would not order again because there are many other places that ship faster and bigger “small” plants.

EDIT: After leaving a bad review on the website the owner quickly called me back and said he would be sending in a free plant. Also explained that they had 3 employees shipping 300 plants a day (?) and that notes get lost easily.

Really similar to my experience; only ordered from them once but I was definitely not impressed. Their sizing was nearly PetFlytrap levels of bad on half of what I ordered and a lot of their stuff is overpriced. I honestly have no idea why they're basically the go-to recommendation for new growers besides the owner being essentially a household name in the community.

Yeah I agree. I think their reputation is (or was) good because of the amount of variety of plants they have and that many pots come with free hitchhikers. I would recommend Joel’s carnivorous plants for beginners, or Home Depot/lowes if the plants arrived there recently and aren’t half dead yet.

Btw I actually just happen to have a flava cuprea BH x (rosea "Mama Cass" x typical). Got it for my roommate as a $10 random from them in my order in Nov 2020 as basically a seedling; the label was half rubbed off but I finally pieced it together after about a year. It's been kept under a porch its whole life with just a few hours of direct sunlight in the morning, so who knows what it would look like with full sun though. No flower this year but I'd be shocked if it didn't next year.

Do you have any idea what the “pvb” in pvb mama cass could stand for? Is it another name for rosea like your mama cass hybrid?

This is what mine looks like:

Purpurea var. burkei (correction: purpurea venosa burkei), took me a long time to put that together myself. Same thing as rosea as far as I'm aware, just depends whether you consider it a separate species or not. Here's a thread on it from the sarracenia board.
EDIT: Don't think I have any pictures from when mine was that small, but I think yours is probably significantly redder than it was. I'd be interested to see how different it ends up looking, though I'd expect the shape to be pretty similar at least.

It refers to the codes suggested in 'The Savage Garden" by Peter D'amato, the fellow who started CalCarn

Is my plant made of hybrids that are usually tolerant of hot weather and low humidity? I thought purpurea hybrids weren’t good with that weather, so I also specifically requested no purpureas. I guess it technically isn’t a purpurea

You can consider it Sarracenia Catesbaei.

Do those ones need me to put water inside the pitchers?

pvb/rosea is from the florida panhandle and surrounding area. It should be perfectly fine in the heat at least. And they don't need water added, mine didn't make a lot of juice but it had no problem catching and digesting stuff up to the size of carpenter bees last summer.

I've ordered from California Carnivores twice (both times last summer), and like NightRaider, I was not impressed. The plants that I received were healthy and are growing well this spring, but when CC says "small", they mean tiny. I thought the plants were grossly overpriced for their size. I'm not planning to buy anything more from CC. It isn't hard to find better deals elsewhere for the same amount of money.

The rhizomes I got from them came with black roots, and unhealthy crowns. Oh well, at least I got them only for the cost of shipping.

I would also like to point out that the soil looks very compact and feels like mud. I’m not even sure if carnivorous plants can survive in soil that doesn’t have good drainage and isn’t airy.