This is the first time in Sarracenia x catesbaei purpurea x flava. The leaf of this pitcher plant has a hood that prevents the pencam from going in. I had taken some pictures around the mouth of the pitcher but never inside. Then something sort of bad happened: a small tear in the back of the leaf appeared. Just an inch, but it was enough to get the pencam in easily.
Now that I can get the pencam in, a new problem arose. The inside of the pitcher is considerably larger than the other Sarracenia I have In Leucophylla and Judith Hindle, the width if the pencam (7mm) is close to the internal diameter of the pitcher when the pencam is at the depth of the digestive liquid.
The pencam is held in place by the pitcher itself and that stabilizes the video.
Bugbat is slightly wider, but you can pinch the leaf a little to hold it steady. In this wide-mouthed pitcher, the pencam is free to move much more. This makes freehand focusing and filming very difficult.
(eventually, i bought a high tech tripod system to hold the pencam in place. More on that later)
That said, with a little patience and luck, you can get a decent video. The first thing you see a couple of dead flies well above the water level. One of the flies looks like its covered with fuzz. I suspect the fuzz is some sort of mold or fungus, but I don't know. (it was halloween. Perhaps it was a ghost) As you get closer to the digestive liquid, you can see many white blobs. These are more of the digestive assistants of the plant's. I believe they are mites
And there are a lot of them.
Very creepy
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