Pitcher Plants occur in many areas of the world in wet, boggy environments. Usually they flower first, before developing their pitchers or nectar, so that their pollinators won’t be eaten before they can pollinate the plants! Most pitcher plants secrete a sweet-smelling nectar around the lip of the pitcher which attracts wasps, yellow jackets, beetles, ants and other small insects. The nectar makes the insects drowsy, and once they follow the nectar trail into the trap, they are unable to keep their footing and slip and fall in. Downward pointing hairs add to the difficulties in escaping. Once they’re down in the tube, the digestive enzymes start to work; by fall, the tubes are often quite full of beetle backs, wings, feet, and other indigestible body parts!!

They go dormant in the winter, re-emerging from their rhizome in the spring. If planted outside around a pond or in a bog garden, they should be well-mulched to protect them if the ground freezes. Or the rhizome can be dug up, dead leaves trimmed off, and placed in a plastic bag (closed, but not completely airtight) in the vegetable bin of your refrigerator for the winter for 2-3 months. To grow indoors, they will live fine in a pot using peat or long-fibered sphagnum moss kept damp all the time, or even just in water (use rainwater or distilled water). Use the refrigerator method to allow them to go dormant in the winter.

Sarracenia flava - tall green or green with red veins, can grow to 4’ tall; also a variety native to NC called "coppertop", with a beautiful burnished copper colored hood.

Sarracenia purpurea - fat prostrate pitchers, green to burgundy with pink to red flowers. Don’t grow very tall, but form quite large clumps.

Sarracenia purpurea 'Brunswick Beauty' - introducing a new cultivar, characterized by beautiful solid pink pitchers that turn deeper burgandy-red as the plant matures.

Sarracenia rubra - "sweet pitcher" - slender green tube with red veins or coppery-colored top. Usually grow to 16" with red flowers.

Sarracenia minor - “hooded pitcher plant” – has what appear to be escape holes on the back of the plant under the hood (called fenestrations). Insects can’t get out and they fall in tube.”

Sarracenia x 'Dana's Delight' - willissii x leucophylla [willissii = (purpurea x psittacina) x (flava x purpurea) x purpurea] -  Beautiful deep burgandy color!

Sarracenia x 'Judith Hindle' - (purpurea x flava) x leucophylla - Flared hood with burgandy accents!

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' - selection of Sarracenia leucophylla for special flower - Pitcher is white with burgandy accents!

Sarracenia x 'Scarlet Belle' - leucophylla x psittacina - Grows taller than psittacina, and gets more and more intense burgandy coloring as it matures!