Prepare to Abandon Hope, All Ye Ants Who Enter Here!
One of my newest pitcher plant has opened. I got the S. “Abandoned Hope” because I wanted a pitcher with pronounced veining. Something that would show nicely when filmed inside. The first time I recorded inside, it looks pretty uniformly green. But fear not. It should grow more colorful as it matures in the Texas sun.
The first video was taken in the morning when I first spotted that the pitcher had opened. I didn’t spot any mites on the lip of the pitcher, yet. I did spot a large mite exploring his new home. He was wandering around the top of Hooker zone 3, the slippery zone. (I tentatively identify it as Macroseius biscutatus but it could be Sarraceniopus Hopefully someone with expertise will clarify this.) I didn’t go deeper into the pitcher. I was afraid of squishing my new friend with the pencam. There was something strange deeper in the tube that I spotted later.
The second video was taken in the evening. This time, I spotted some mites around the lip of the pitcher (2:15 minutes in). The video is pretty shaky (the pitcher is blowing in the wind and the pencam is freehand), but you can make out the blobs on the move.
Looking down the new pitcher, you can see the boundary between the Hooker zones 2 (conduction) and 3 (glandular or as I call it: the slippery zone). At around 3:30, you are looking down the pitcher, zone 2 is slightly lighter than the lower zone. That is with sunlight. Turn on the pencam lights and voila! Zone 2 turns white and zone 3 goes dark green, (That never ceases to amuse me) Not sure why zone 2 brightens up so much, there is reference to the plant secreting nectar and producing a waxy substance here. Maybe it's the waxy stuff that’s very reflective.
Went further into the pitcher this time. Spotted something strange that I didn’t see before. At around 6:00 mins in, there is a large brownish mystery item. It's relatively large. It looks like half an O-ring fell into the pitcher. I realized that what I was seeing was a small hole in the leaf. (It's a very big hole to an ant.) It seems like there are a lot of trichomes (hairs) around the hole. Also seems like there are a lot of mites around it, too. Very curious.
Just below the hole, a large mite wandered up from below. I used backlighting with a small LED flashlight from outside the pitcher toward the end of the video.
The pitcher caught it's first prey on April 7. The fly is floating on the pitcher water which looks about an inch below the hole in the pitcher.
In case this pitcher looks familiar, S. x “Abandoned Hope” is on the cover of the first edition of The Savage Garden. That has been my go to book for growing carnivorous plants so I thought that it would be cool to get a “famous” pitcher plant. Get both at https://www.californiacarnivores.com/
