Sarracenia are a wonderful group of plants. They are carnivorous, live in bogs with little to no nutrients (which is why they've developed their carnivorous nature), and have some of the most amazing flower and leaf structures in the world. In the wild, the upright tube-like pitchers can be up to 2 1/2 feet tall, and in exceptional cases can be 4 feet tall! The flowers have an amazing structure, smell, and faint alien-ness about them.
In the wild, these beautiful flowers are pollinated by bees, wasps and other such animals. When not in flower, these insects are favorite food items. It is this ability to catch and extract nutrients from insects that enables them to survive where other plants cannot. Every single detail about them is strange or foreign in the plant world, right down to their seeds.
If you are lucky enough to get Sarracenia seeds (I recommend the ICPS Seed bank to get good seeds and help support carnivorous plants around the world) you need to follow a few simple steps:
- Get seeds that are as fresh as can be. The fresher the better. Also try to get them in the right season i.e. November through March.
- Fill a good sized pot (4”-6” wide) with either 100% pure Sphagnum Moss (make sure there are absolutely NO fertilizers or other junk) or 50% pure peat moss and 50% pure sand/perlite. Water with good quality water (reverse osmosis or filtered of some sort) and make sure the soil is thoroughly moist, and scatter the seeds.
- Take the seeds and put them in a plastic baggie with a drop or two of water in them. Zip them up, and through them in the fridge for four weeks. The purpose of this is to try and trick the seeds into thinking its winter, and after the four weeks it's spring (time to sprout). This is called stratification.
- Scatter the seeds on top of the soil.
- Wait a week or two for the first signs of germination
- Grow them out and in five to eight years, you will have a huge, mature Sarracenia!
