Aborted Sarracenia flowers and rot

[henk]

Hi All,

Just want to share a recent experience with rot.

Because of the silly weather we've been having, a lot of my Sarracenia flowers aborted. Now the obvious ones, I cut off as soon as I saw that they weren't going anywhere. The troubles come from ones hidden and not even fully pushed out of the protective sleeve at the bottom of the rhizome. The flower bud would start to rot and this would then very quickly spread to the actual rhizome. Signs of this are misshapen pitchers, which are usually all twisted or just generally a lot smaller than normal. Don't write these first signs off as cold damage as I did, after inspecting for insects! Have a close look at the rhizome and see if there is a stuck aborted flower!

I've completed a lot of surgery last night on the plants effected, (forgot to take pictures) but I'm planning on closely inspecting the rest and will take pictures if I find more troubles.

Species mostly effected are rubra and flava, also some of the hybrids which has one of those as parents.

Keeping fingers crossed that they'll recover (especially since a few are new, and thus very small)

Cheers

[shoggoths]

Also, I don't know if you are keeping your plants really wet at the moment but in my condition (10-15 C + rain every 2 days on average), I only left a bit of water in the bottom of my potted bog. I will raise the water level only when there will be much more sun and heat.

[henk]

That is something else which has been missing the season so far. Rain! We almost had nothing here. So they are not sitting in a lot of water, and I usually let the water dry out (the bottom, not the actual pots the Sarracenia are in) before refilling it with about a 1cm, the pots are 7" tall.

[shoggoths]

Good.

[lloyd]

In my limited experience sarr's do not like prolonged, hard freezes, which lead to rhizome death and secondary rot and infestations. Keeping the soil temperature 32-33°F this winter seemed to make for much less rhizome die-back.

[henk]

Found another plant with the same problem, this time it was a S. oreophila, I've had this plant now for close to 5 years. And the problem was on the main growth point.

So after removing the protective leafs around the growth point / flower bud (the flower bud fell off at this stage, and wasn't really visible before this stage), the rot can be seen.


I then cut the hole tip off, and the following picture shows the progression of the rot into the actual rhizome itself


The tissue below this is all nice and white so healthy. So far all the rot I've encountered has been well above the part of the rhizome in the actual peat mix.

This is the time I've had so much rot and can only attribute it to the cooler / less sunny weather we've been having. Only ever lost one plant (a few years ago) to actual rot, been paranoid since then, that is how I came to notice the troubles this years.

lloyd , the plants overwinter in a garage, which doesn't go below zero. And they were brought in for those nights where it would drop below 3, just in case. But of course, the predictions weren't always correct, so they were outside a few times when it got close to 0 or below for a short time before sunrise.

Thanks shoggoths / Lloyd, for comments.

Hope this is useful to other people, so that they can nip the problem in the bud before it gets out of control!
Cheers

[lloyd]

If the soil didn't freeze solid it probably wasn't the cold. Cold, damp conditions above 3C shouldn't hurt the plants. Maybe the growth point of the rhizome was under the surface of the soil? Did the garage ever overheat on a late winter day? Sometimes an overly warm garage with no air movement can lead to mould. Anyway scrape all the rot away, expose the cut surfaces to the air (maybe a dusting of powdered sulphur?) and hope for the best. Lots of sun and air movement.