FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My Sarracenia has recently come out of dormancy since I purchased it and the pitchers are quite small and the tips are burning. I purchased it Toward the beginning of its dormancy period and the pitchers were much larger.

I re-potted with a 2:1 peat moss:perlite mix with dried sphagnum moss in the top cm. Have only watered with distilled or rain water and ensure they never get dry. During the hotter periods, I fill a saucer it sits in and the water will be taken up in a day. Sometimes I replenish daily, sometimes I will give it a day before filling the saucer again as I’m worried it will rot.

It receives full sun from about 9/10am until 3/4pm with temperatures in summer averaging 30°C. Days that exceed 30°C, I will locate it to a cooler spot, but it has only happened a couple of times so far.

It has been quite windy, with a couple of the pitchers being blown horizontal, to which I made a string loop to try hold them up using one another.

In addition, I live in Perth, Western Australia. We are entering summer. The climate is described as Mediterranean. Warm temperate dry and warm temperate moist for summer and winter respectively

Will they always be this small? How can I improve them so they grow bigger and healthier?

Hi Mountainw0lf
If you are coming into summer season, stand the plant in 2.5 cm of water all the time, it won't rot in that heat if it has airflow over it.

If you bought it towards the beginning of its dormancy and it is now coming to summer, then those are either last years pitchers and will die back, so for those pitchers to be turning crispy, would be normal, or they are new pitchers which have burned. either way it should be left in full sun in water and it will sort itself out.

With regard to pitcher size, it very much depends on what leucophylla you have got im afraid. The rhizome looks small, so I would expect small pitchers at the moment, but there doesn't look to be too many signs of last year's pitchers, which if there were only a few could mean that the rhizome is not yet strong enough to produce large pitchers if it is ever going to.

If the wind is strong tie the pitchers to a stick in the pot rather than to each other, that will give them some movement and support. If you tie them together without a stick, they could all blow over and break.

If you want nice colourfull large pitchers try to give it more daylight time, it will grow with 7 hours full sum but will benefit from more.

Cheers
Steve.

Steve said most of what I was going to say: That rhizome looks small and it's a young plant. Also, since you acquired it recently while going into dormancy season, this division has been set back a bit more. It can take 2-3 years to bulk that piece up enough for it to produce more adult pitchers. The conditions sound fine. 30*C in full sun is easily tolerated, and actually preferred by sarracenia. They get hotter than that in the summer in their natural habitat. Allow it to get hot as there's no reason to cool them down, and as much sun as you possibly can, & keep it moist and it will sort itself out.

I personally bought a huge portion of my sarracenia collection in a similar way: Young divisions mailed to me right before dormancy. I knew they would look like crap this first growing season, and again mostly look like crap the next growing season. All I can do while I wait is keep giving them as much sun as possible and feed the hell out of the pitchers. They are good at catching their own bugs, but I also dumped MaxSea fertilizer solution into many pitchers throughout the growing season. Once that rhizome bulks up it will produce better pitchers.

steve booth wrote:If the wind is strong tie the pitchers to a stick in the pot rather than to each other, that will give them some movement and support. If you tie them together without a stick, they could all blow over and break.

Thanks for the advice Steve! I have the loop tied to a stick that’s hiding behind a pitcher in the photo. It’s working well!

As for last years growth, I trimmed it back as it had dried up almost entirely to the rhizome. They were shorter, but the openings were almost 10 times the size of the current ones. There were new shoots showing before I cut back.

Thanks again!