Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Hi, would like to check if anyone has tried self pollenating or at least pollenating the same flower with it's own pollen for Sarracenia?

One of my Sarracenia (I think it's the S. Alata) has grown a bud, and it should be blooming soon. I would like to know if I can try to get some seeds out of it if I try to pollenate it with it's own pollen. The problem is that there are no other Sarracenias in my collection that is actually flowering now.

Another thing, is that we are about to get cooler weather now that the North East winds are starting to come (dry season) I am not sure why the plant chose to bloom at this time, wonder if it was actually sleeping these past few months, though it never grew any dormancy leaves.

Wonder if I should just cut the flower stalk! I heard someone tell me that Sarracenias don't show that much stress while flowering though.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

I don't think that sarrs can self pollinate themselves.Therefore cut it or something or maybe trade with other people

Ken

Ken

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Thanks Ken, but what I mean is I will be pollenating it myself by manually transferring Pollen from itself and pollenating the same flower. Sorry for using "self pollenating". :)

I wonder if anyone has tried this before. I sure did try this on a VFT, and I got a few seeds from it.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Hi Arvin...

From what i have learn you can actually manually pollinate sarra with it's own pollen but the result may be guaranteed. If you can pollinate it with another clone or another plant then it will surely set seeds...

Btw you will never know... maybe you will get good set of seeds by just using it's own pollen^^ "always have fate"

Hope this help...

Regards
Jonathan

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Hi Arvin. You can pollinate the flower with it's own pollen but the resulting offspring wont be as vigorous or as strong growing as if it was pollinated using pollen from another flower. The success rate of germination can also be reduced when 'selfing' Sarra's.

As for the timing of the flower your plant will be coming out of a dormancy period as they flower after dormancy. Alata's do not produce phyllodia when dormant they simply stop producing new pitchers. If you have flava or oreophilla plants you will get phyllodia from these when they are going into dormancy.

Can you post a picture of your plant? I have an alata 'Red Throat' flowering at teh moment and would be happy to collect the pollen from it and exchange it with yours. PM me if you are interested. Cheers.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Thanks everyone, will try.

Strath, I will post photo soon. Not sure if sending each other pollens will work, post usually take 7 days the flowers might have closed by that time, but I'm willing to try. It is still a bud now.

I have also flava and Leuco, both are not flowering yet. My plants are not given any cold dormancy, the original owner who sold them to me never had problems. These are technically "island grown" Sarras from seeds, hopefully that means they have grown to not need dormancy... maybe.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Hi Arvin

Yeah i heard of some people growing these guys from seeds after a few generations they don't have to go through dormancy at all.I don't know how true is this though.

Ken

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

My s.rubra gulfensis self pollinates. Seeds have been collected & seedlings have germinated from it.

The others` seed pods have not ripen / turned complete brown yet so i`m not sure if seeds are produced. The `others` meaning my s.minor hybrid, s. purpurea, s.leuco hybrid, etc etc.... the only sarra which tried to flower but collapsed so far is my preciousss s.psittacina....those i propagate via division.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

No problems Arvin. If your flower is still a bud the time delay wont be a problem. My flowers have been open now for over a week so there will be no problems with yours having died off before the pollen arrives.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Check out the following thread of mine on the GCS forum. It shows the flower parts of one of my Sarracenia. Hope it is helpful to you.

http://www.greenculturesg.com/forum/...wtopic=4781&hl

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Photos of my Sarracenia that has budded. Strath, not 100% sure if it's S. Alata please help me with ID, if you are willing to share some pollens that would be great too, though I'm willing to try manually pollenating the flower with it's own.

Cindy, unfortunately the photos I saw of the parts are a bit small, though still informative.

TTFN
Arvin

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...rraalata21.jpg

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...eniaalata0.jpg

Oh and in the second photo you can see that one of the leaves has a white thing on it. My leocophylla has more of these, when I try to scrape them off they sort of look like web. Fairly easy to scrape off so I do so whenever I see them. Doesn't seem to stress the plants much though.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Looks like alata to me. It should have white/ivory petals when they open. PM your address and I will send you some pollen.

The pest on your plant is mealy bug. They often attack Sarra's and they will generally be nesting/hiding down amongst the leaves near the rhizome. Raising the water level above the rhizome for a couple of days should help to kill them off. If there is no effect to the plant though and the infestation is only small as you say then just pick them off.

I know of a guy that uses systemic pesticides on his sarra's. He uses Rogor at half strength or Malathon. If you search the web you will find what active ingredient these use as the chemicals may have different trading names where you are. Cheers.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Hi

I was just wondering if you pollinate a flower's pollen to the same flower do you get a clone of that Sarr like when you use TC or Cuttings????

Ken

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Hi Ken, my understanding is that there is still genetic variability and that generally the offspring are waeker than if the plant is crossed with another plant altogether.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Thanks Strath, We have Malathaion here and will consider buying a small bottle soon because my collection is slowly growing and I have found some pests infecting some. I saw a slug in one of my nepenthes, I guess munching on what roots there is, burned it dead. My problem with Malathaion is that they stink, and my brother will complain because our "garden" is beside his room. Meantime I will just break them up manually. I did what you mentioned already about raising the water level, but some are higher up and those I manually take off.

I think what Ken was asking is that if the traits of the mother plant will be carried down to the seedlings if you self pollenate it. I have no answer for this Ken, maybe others will be able to answer. I do agree with Strath that you do get the possibility that the seedlings will not be as tough as the mother plant.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

No problems Arvin. What I was trying ot say above is that you will not get a true clone through 'selfing'. The projeny will be similar and share many traits with the mother plant but it will not be a true clone. The only way to get a true clone is through vegetative reproduction, i.e. rhizome or leaf cutting or TC from vegetative bud. The seed grown plants will almost certainly be weaker than the mother plant and it is best to cross pollinate flowers whenever possible.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Thanks Understood and totally agree! :)

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Strath, if you haven't posted the pollens yet, maybe don't anymore, because today the bud has actually started to open. I need to research again and check out photos like what Cindy posted about the parts of the flower so I can try to do self pollenation. I am not sure how long Sarracenia flowers last, but maybe it won't be open for one whole week, thus might not be practical to wait for the pollens to arrive?

Will post photo tomorrow maybe.

Also having some rain now, wondering if I should protect the flower from rain or not? Capensis flowers do not seem to like rain, though Spatulata flowers dont' seem to be bothered by it.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

No problems Arvin I was going to post pollen out today or tomorrow. I will leave it for now. The flower shouldn't be affected by rain. Basically what you need to do is take the pollen off teh bottom of the flower by lifting one of te petals up. A cotton bud is good for this. The section at the bottom of the flower looks like an upside down umbrella. On the points of the 'umbrella' you will see a little 'spike'. You simply rub tghe pollen onto these. You will need to do all five of them as they all relate to different sections of the ovary. If you only fertilise one, only one ovule will produce seeds. Hope this helps.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Arvin,

The photos are thumbnails. Click on them and they open up to large pics.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

helps a lot Strath thanks, didn't know that I needed to do all 5. As of now it seems that there is still really no pollen yet, I still can't access the inside, probably still developing.

Thanks Cindy for the clarification will click on it :) i was able to also see a cut away photo in wikipedia too.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...taflower17.jpg

Photo of S. Alata flower. Thanks to you guys and gals, I was able to collect some pollen and I was able to find the Sigmas and tried to pollenate them today. Will try again tomorrow to make sure.

I got the pollens from Anthers though because the style didn't have much pollens on it yet. Maybe that is a mistake because maybe the pollens are not yet ripe on the anthers, that is why I will try again as long as it is still possible.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Arvin, when the anthers are ripe the pollen will fall onto the "inverted umbrella". All you need to do is to use a cotton bud to pick up the pollen and rub it onto the stigma. If pollination is successful, the petals fall off the next day. I continued to pollinate for a week after that.

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Thanks Cindy, if I didn't know that the petals naturally fall off after pollentation I would be very sad if that happened to my flower. Today I did another pollenation, this time the pollens are on the bottom of the style/umbrella already. Will do, continue to pollenate even if the petals fall off already.

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Guys, may I know how long do sarracenia flowers last? The petals have already fallen off, but the rest is still there, I can see that the middle part is swollen (hopefully that means it was fertilized) but it has been around 20 days since start of pollenation and the flower is still green. Not that I don't appreciate it. Wonder if it means something is wrong or that it is a good sign that it is taking so long for it to dry up?

TTFN
Arvin

Re: Sarracenia Self pollenation
 

Hi all,

here is a photo of the Sarra flower, I wonder if the inflated insides means that it was actually pollenated and is making seeds now?

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n.../flower004.jpg