In spring, Sarracenia flowers are bagged to protect them from unwanted pollination, and specific crosses are mapped out and hand pollinated. We produce hundreds of carefully curated crosses each spring from within our large parent stock.
We leverage our extensive parent plants imported or sourced from growers around the country. We maintain one of the largest genetic collections of Sarracenia Flava and Sarracenia Leucophylla in the US.
Successful pollinations take months to ripen, and are harvested in early fall for processing. Sarracenia require a cold dormancy, so seeds are extracted and dried, then stratified cold and wet for 6 weeks to prepare them for sowing.
Sown seeds take 6-12 months of active growth before initial characterists are visible. The seedlings are housed in custom grow chambers to help accelerate their growth. In the wild it can take 5-7 years or more for a seedlings to reach adulthood, but in cultivation that time is greatly reduced.
Seedlings are periodically evaluated for targeted characteristics. Some of our seedling production is also for the cultivation trade as we produce upwards of a quarter million seeds a year with our existing production.
Selected seedlings are planted out and undergo continued observation. Plants are evaluated for both cut pitcher potential or expanded cultivation potential. Here are a number of select Sarracenia Leucophylla crosses being grown out individually.
Adult Sarracenia Flava contining to grow out in our largest of our 4 greenhouses dedicated to Sarracenia. Depending on targeting utilization, we can leverage plants for rhizome, seed and cut pitcher production throughout the whole growing season.
Fresh cuttings of Flava, Leuco and some hybrids.