One of the scariest books concerning plants ever written begins along the lines of, "When a day that you are sure is Wednesday starts off sounding like a Sunday, you know that something, somewhere is seriously wrong."
A possibility that didn't perhaps occur to John Wyndham when he was writing 'The Day of the Triffids' was that you might simply be in North Staffordshire. It's pretty quiet up here. We do have our triffids, though. Or rather, I have my triffids...
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| Sarracenia selection - there are more! |
I have been gathering a collection of Sarracenias for the past three years, all bought at local flower shows (Tatton Park, Shrewsbury) either from Hampshire Carnivorous Plants or the excellent P & J Plants (formerly Marston Exotics) from Herefordshire. I recommend P&J's website and their plants very highly and have also found them to be generous with advice and encouragement.
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| From P&J Plants stand at Shrewsbury Flower Show 2011 |
Sarracenias are the classy end of the carnivorous plant spectrum. They are photosynthesizing
femmes fatales. None of the cheap mousetrap mechanics of the Venus Fly Trap - there is something alien and yet
Art Nouveau about Sarracenias.
While they all share the same basic trumpet snare for their prey,these can be squat and rounded or very long and tapering. Some are rather frilly, others have crisp, clean lines. But they are all equally deadly.
The first of the collection (see above) took up residence on the kitchen window sill in the summer of 2009, and immediately set about proving its killer credentials. I was making jam one afternoon and a wasp decided to come in to investigate. That proved to be a fatal error as it was lured to its doom within one of the trumpets. I heard a faint buzzing coming from somewhere, then spotted the wasp's silhouette through the translucent plant. It made a brief but futile attempt to chew its way out, before being overcome by whatever intoxicant Sarracenias use to drug their prey.
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| Dicing with death |
They can be almost too successful. I have had to cut off trumpets so stuffed with dead flies and wasps that they were putrefying. On one very grizzly occasion I decided to do a length-wise dissection of one long trumpet while talking to the local school about carnivorous plants. We hadn't reckoned on the maggots...
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| Doomed! |
They are crafty plants, producing their flowers about now, before the trumpets come to maturity so they don't eat their pollinators.
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| Flower of Sarracenia flava |
Sarracenias need to soft water and an acid growing medium. Quite a few of my plants now need repotting or divison (they are herbaceous perennials and will propagate successfully that way). The expert advice is to grow them in peat...
Peat. To the ethical gardener, purchasing peat is like buying crack cocaine. Another moral dilemma!
