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.