Sunday, December 5, 2010

Sarracenia flava var. maxima - Honeysuckle Road, Harleyville, NC




Data at a glance...

Latin name                     Sarracenia flava var. maxima
Clone name                    TBA - Harleyville clones for now
Acquired                         Summer, 2009.
Pitcher flush pattern      2: 1: P (Sp: Su: Au)
Growth strength             Strong
Division types                Unknown.

Pitcher description
Lid with filament under-developed, pinched, both surfaces green with no markings. Entire pitcher green, pale red markings present on sides of tube as pitcher develops and enlarges, fading once pitcher opens. Flower unknown.

Notes
Unfortunately, true S. flava var. maxima are quite scarce in Australia, and antho. free S. flava are nonexistant. This is somewhat ironic, as the first plants to make it to the nurseries here in any numbers were S. flava var. maxima, but they seem to have been lost to cultivation. One clone that was doing the rounds up in Sydney proved to have alata in it, and got red markings in full sun anyway. There is another nice clone held by members of the VCPS; my plant of that suffered a pot falling onto new pitchers, so it is not very photogenic this year. The plant shown here was grown from seed by VCPS member Ron Abernethy. I googled Hurleyville, NC, and was referred to Hurleyville NY in all cases. There is also no Honeysuckle Road in NC, at least if you believe Google Earth. I guess whoever put the data onto this plant wanted to protect their locality.

***DEC 2012 UPDATE***
A very kind gentleman wrote in a while ago and let me know that "Hurleyville" is actually a misspelling of Harleyville, NC.. Honeysuckle road looks like it runs through remnant stands of Longleaf Pine, but the habitat now looks quite fragmented on Google Earth.