Sarracenia pitcher plants come in many shapes and sizes, varying in their height, coloration and hood shape. The produce nectar to lure prey and produce slippery surfaces to force prey to fall into the lower trap where they are digested. This is explained in greater detail at sites like sarracenia.com and I will be focusing on the plants that I have and what you can see in them with the pencam.
I would like to reiterate how amazing the pencam is for looking inside pitcher plants. If you had asked 10 years ago for a waterproof camera small enough to fit inside a pitcher, you would be told it couldn’t be done (unless you had NASA’s or DARPA’s budget). Today, you can get it on amazon. It's as if Teslong had built it for this purpose. It fits into all but the smallest of pitchers. And it usually gets you right up to Zone 4, the digestive area. Zone 4, as a general rule of thumb, is about halfway down the pitcher regardless of species. As can be seen in the pictures below, you can see the pencam lights inside various pitchers.
In a 12 in Judith Hindle, the pencam light is around 6 inches.
In a 10.5 in Bugbat, the pencam light is around 6.5 inches.
In a 10 in Bugbat, the pencam light is around 5.5 inches.
In a 27 in Leucophylla, the pencam light is around 12 inches.
Sarracenia Judith Hindle is a medium sized hybrid pitcher plant. The red veining on it's nearly horizontal hood attracts flying insects and people alike. Ants and other wingless insects also are lured into this pitcher plant. The horizontal hood also makes the Judith Hindle an ideal pitcher to explore with the pencam. That is, the hood doesn’t get in the way of the pencam..
Sarracenia Bugbat Sarracenia rubra x minor
Sarracenia Bugbat is an popular medium sized hybrid ( rubra x minor). It’s red tubular pitchers remind people of a baseball bat giving it it's nickname. The pitcher’s mouth is covered by a hood. I was hesitant to look into the bugbat because of the hood, but if you fold the hood’s lip in, the pencam fits in nicely. Bugbat is an excellent ant catcher.
Sarracenia Leucophylla is a beautiful, tall (frequently over 2 ft) pitcher plant. (It's also the pitcher I used for the logo to the left)
S.Leucophylla and other tall pitchers presents a challenge for filming with the Pencam. To get it to where the action is puts the Pencam deep inside the pitcher. So deep, the focus dial is inside, making manual focus difficult. Eventually, I came up with a workaround. Focus on the pitcher's lip about an inch from the lip before entering the pitcher. That is a good place to start. When the Pencam is deep inside the pitcher, you can fine focus by moving the Pencam up and down. Its a bit of trail and error at first, but once you get the hang of it, filming inside a pitcher plant is easy.
Sarracenia x catesbaei purpurea x flava