FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I'm sure many of you have made these observations before (and it probably has been published before-- somewhere) but I've been keeping a close watch on my S. purpurea plants to see the earliest stages of pitcher production. Obviously, the very first ones have to come directly from the rhizome itself-- but the pitchers I've been seeing have been growing from the petioles of other leaves. Until recently the earliest leaf I had caught led me to believe that the ala/"wing" emerges first with the pitcher behind it (new pitcher a few millimeters tall):



But then a few days back a close examination showed a small curved ridge at the base of a leaf-- and macro photos confirmed it to be an even earlier stage of leaf growth. By the next day, the new infant pitcher had broken free of the older leaf's petiole-- and proved my theory on "ala first" to be wrong! The pitcher emerges first, the ala behind it-- in the earlier infant pitcher (as with the new one) it had quickly leaned backwards against the opposite leaf's petiole, giving the appearance that it had came from that leaf.



I subsiquently over the past couple of days watched the same growth stages with a young pitcher on my new Sarracenia "Purpetrator." (Being a bigger plant, the new emergence on the Purpetrator was more in the range of a couple of centimeters at the start as opposed to a few millimeters.)



Anything practical to learn from these observations? Well, one issue that I see debated is whether or not to trim off damaged or dying leaves. This suggests an answer of "no!"-- at least not to the base of the leaf. By cutting the whole leaf away, you are removing the potential growth point for a new leaf. On the other hand, cutting an old leaf off above the petiole does not prevent new leaf growth from that petiole, as can be seen in the "Purpetrator" photos. So there may be a possibility that cutting a damaged leaf above the petiole could trigger energy into producing a new leaf from the side.

Continuing close observations of early pitcher growth in S. purpurea. On 6/3, I noticed something had caused an inflated, near-opening new pitcher on a division from this year to snap of midway down. Annoying, but I knew it wouldn't set the plant back much (it had 4 leaves, the 5th was the one that broke.) But then, only 3 days later, I noticed a swelling on the side of the broken leaf as a new pitcher was about to pop out of it (I don't have a photo because of camera issues, but it looked pretty much like the "before" shot in the two-day growth S. purpurea picture in the earlier post.)
Three days after that (6 days after the break) I have a working camera again and get a photo of the new pitcher (after trimming back the broken part much closer to the stem) and then, yesterday, 9 days after the break, I see that, even though the new pitcher is just a few days old and barely emerged, it already has a second pitcher emerging from it!

More plant watching-- I note that (not surprisingly) the more pitchers on a growing point, the faster it produces more. When the two divisions I was watching first started out (with two pitchers each) each new pitcher would reach the opening stage before the next new pitcher appeared. But now, there are at least 3 pitchers at a time in various stages of pre-opening development. Here is a third pitcher just peeking out of one of the leaves that I had posted above.

I've had s. purpurea for around 10 years now, but this is my first effort at closely watching where and when individual leaves originate, and I've just had one conclusion shot down-- until now, it has looked like the only area of new pitcher production on a growth point has been from the base of the newest pitcher, so pitchers have been coming on "single file" with no older leaf bases producing pitchers. That hypothesis was disproven a couple of days ago when I noticed a new pitcher growing from the base of one of the oldest leaf stumps on the growing point! These are pitchers two and three from the above post, with the new pitcher near them.