My Collection - The Hungry Windowsill

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My Collection
Every plant on the windowsill, the porch and in the bog, as of September 1999
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Here's the whole list. It's 36 lines. Some lines are a pot with two or three plants in it, one is a whole tray of seedlings, and the bog clumps keep splitting, so when I say "about forty plants" I'm being modest. Shirley says I'm being something else.

Where it lives: Bog = the kiddie-pool bog in the back yard. Porch = the trays along the back porch rail. Sill = the kitchen and spare room windows. Lights = under the shop light in the spare room.
Where it came from: Local = a nursery here in the Wilmington area that grows its own. Mail = a mail-order carnivorous plant nursery, all nursery-grown. Trade = traded with other growers I met on the carnivorous plant e-mail list. Mine = grown from my own seed or divided from my own plants. Volunteer = came up by itself.

Nothing on this list came out of the woods. Not one.

#	Plant	Lives	Since	From	Notes
*Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula)*
1	Flytrap "Number One"	Bog	1995	Local	My first. Divided twice and still has the biggest traps I grow.
2	Flytrap, division of No. 1	Bog	1997	Mine	Catching up to its parent.
3	Flytrap, all-red form	Porch	1997	Mail	Deep red all over in full sun, leaf stalks too. Slower than the green ones.
4	Flytrap, large-trap form	Porch	1998	Mail	Traps well over an inch in June. Caught a small grasshopper. Lucas cheered.
5	Flytrap, grocery store rescue	Porch	1998	Store	Out of the plastic cup and into the sun. Officially Lucas's.
6	Flytrap seedlings, tray of about 20	Porch	1998	Mine	From my own hand-pollinated seed. Traps the size of a grain of rice. Three to five years to grow up.
*Pitcher plants (Sarracenia)*
7	S. flava, yellow trumpet	Bog	1996	Local	Tall yellow-green trumpets, almost three feet this year. Big yellow flowers in March.
8	S. flava, heavy red veins	Bog	1998	Trade	Red veining all down the throat.
9	S. purpurea, purple pitcher plant	Bog	1996	Local	Low, fat pitchers that hold rain water. Turns purple-red in the fall.
10	S. purpurea ssp. venosa	Porch	1997	Mail	The southern purple pitcher plant. Wider and hairier.
11	S. leucophylla, white-topped pitcher plant	Bog	1997	Mail	The showiest plant I own. White tops with red and green veins, best in the fall.
12	S. leucophylla, very white form	Bog	1999	Trade	New this spring. Looks like it was dipped in paint.
13	S. minor, hooded pitcher plant	Bog	1997	Local	The hood has little see-through spots that fool bugs into thinking they're windows.
14	S. rubra, sweet pitcher plant	Bog	1998	Mail	Slender pitchers. The flowers really do smell sweet.
15	S. alata, pale pitcher plant	Bog	1998	Mail	From the Gulf Coast. Pale yellow-green and tall.
16	S. psittacina, parrot pitcher plant	Bog	1998	Mail	Lies flat in the wettest corner. The pitchers have a beak like a parrot's.
17	S. × catesbaei (flava × purpurea)	Bog	1998	Trade	A hybrid that happens in the wild where the two grow together.
18	S. × moorei (leucophylla × flava)	Bog	1999	Mail	Tall, with white mottling up top. Just getting settled.
19	S. leucophylla × purpurea, my own cross	Porch	1998	Mine	Pollinated with a paintbrush in the spring of 1998. Seedlings an inch tall. Ask me in a few years.
*Sundews (Drosera)*
20	D. capensis, Cape sundew	Sill	1996	Local	The weed of the collection. It's in every pot I own. The leaves curl around a gnat.
21	D. capensis, white-flowered form	Sill	1998	Trade	Greener leaves, white flowers.
22	D. aliciae	Lights	1998	Mail	A flat red rosette, like a little sticky star.
23	D. spatulata	Lights	1998	Trade	Small and easy. Came as a seed packet in a letter.
24	D. adelae	Lights	1999	Mail	From Australia, where it grows in shade. The only plant I own that wants less light.
25	D. binata, forked sundew	Porch	1997	Mail	Long leaves split into a Y. A tangle of sticky antlers by August.
26	D. filiformis, thread-leaf sundew	Bog	1998	Mail	Leaves like sticky pink threads, a foot tall. Catches more than anything else in the bog for its size.
27	D. capillaris, pink sundew	Bog	1997	Local	Native here. Tiny. Pink flowers.
28	D. intermedia, spoon-leaf sundew	Bog	1999	Volunteer	Came up by itself around the edge of the bog this spring. The seed must have come in the peat.
29	D. rotundifolia, round-leaved sundew	Porch	1998	Trade	A northern plant. It does not love a Wilmington August. Neither do I.
*Butterworts (Pinguicula)*
30	P. moranensis	Sill	1997	Mail	Mexican. Greasy-looking leaves that catch gnats, and big pink flowers.
31	P. gypsicola	Sill	1998	Mail	Mexican. Narrow leaves in summer, a tight little ball in winter.
32	P. esseriana	Sill	1999	Trade	Mexican. Small, with pale pink flowers.
33	P. primuliflora	Porch	1998	Mail	From the Gulf Coast. Grows baby plants on the tips of its leaves.
*Bladderworts (Utricularia)*
34	U. sandersonii	Sill	1998	Trade	Tiny white flowers that look like rabbits with long ears. Visitors don't believe me until they look close.
35	U. livida	Sill	1999	Trade	Pale purple flowers. Grows in a pot of wet peat and nothing else.
36	Utricularia, not sure which	Bog	1999	Volunteer	Little yellow flowers came up in the bog in June. I'm still working out the species. Ideas welcome.

In Memoriam

Every grower kills plants. Anybody who says they haven't is either new or not telling the truth. Here are mine, so you can learn from them.

Two flytraps, 1996. Kept warm on the kitchen windowsill all winter, before I understood dormancy. They grew all winter, then quit in the spring. Lesson: winter rest.
A tropical pitcher plant, 1997. A garden center hanging basket. I hung it on the porch and forgot about it on the first cold night in November. This is why there's an empty fish tank in the garage with a plan attached.
Pinguicula vulgaris, 1997 to 1998. A butterwort from cold northern bogs. Our summers cooked it. Lesson: grow plants that like where you live.
A round-leaved sundew, 1997. Same story, first try. Number 29 is the second try, in afternoon shade, and it's holding on.

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Thomas Upton · [email protected] · last updated Sunday, September 12, 1999