on the road: visiting california carnivores

On our recent trip we had only one nurs­ery on the list of must-visit loca­tions: Cal­i­for­nia Car­ni­vores in Sebastapol.

California Carnivores sign

Spe­cial­iz­ing in car­niv­o­rous plants from around the world, pro­pri­etor Peter D’Amato has assem­bled a col­lec­tion of species and hybrids that run the gamut from venus fly­traps and Amer­i­can pitcher plants to really cool sun­dews and bladderworts.

Sarracenia Danas Delight

One of the first plants that you encounter is this massed group of the hybrid, Sar­race­nia x Dana’s Delight. It’s a fairly com­mon plant, but gather together sev­eral dozen pots of it in a massed dis­play and there’s noth­ing com­mon about it. The pitch­ers color up to a most amaz­ing pur­plish red when grown in strong sunlight.

Sarracenias California Carnivores

Here’s another pitcher plant that had some gor­geous col­oration. I for­got to note the name–sorry–but I think it might be a form or hybrid of S. flava.

Darlingtonia californica at California Carnivores

If there’s a pitcher plant that I covet it’s this one, the Cal­i­for­nia and Ore­gon cobra lily, Dar­ling­to­nia cal­i­for­nica. I’ve killed one already, and won’t attempt another until I’m more con­fi­dent that I can offer it what it needs to survive.

California Carnivores propagation ponds

To grow so many dif­fer­ent kinds of plants requires a lot of space. Here’s a shot of the prop­a­ga­tion ponds.

Carnivore collection

I left the premises with three plants, a cou­ple more than I really have room for in my bog. I posted yes­ter­day about the amaz­ing fly-catching capa­bil­i­ties of the sun­dew I bought (Drosera fil­i­formis ssp. fil­i­formis ‘Florida giant’). Another plant was a divi­sion of an albino hybrid, Super Green Giant.

Sarracenia flava

The third pur­chase was this beau­ti­fully col­ored ver­sion of the yel­low pitcher, Sar­race­nia flava. Here it is from the front…

Sarracenia flava clone from behind

…and here it is from behind.

Sarracenia flava pitcher

…and for con­trast, here’s a form of this species with min­i­mal col­oration, ‘Max­ima.’ I love its yellow-green coloration.

The basic ele­ment of a pitcher plant is a highly devel­oped leaf struc­ture that con­tains a reser­voir of fluid that insects fall into. The bug even­tu­ally drowns, and the the digested insect turns into food for the plant.

The more I look at pitcher plants, the more I appre­ci­ate the dif­fer­ences between them. It’s like musi­cal vari­a­tions on a theme, where you start with some­thing sim­ple and rec­og­niz­able, and then go off into all sorts of amaz­ing directions.

Jenny was out to this coast for a fam­ily visit, and was along for this plant trip. Her pur­chases were two: a small but very pretty and cute blad­der­wort, Utric­u­laria livida, and a dis­tinc­tive lit­tle venus fly­trap, Dion­aea mus­cip­ula.

The husband’s reac­tion when we got back to the hotel went some­thing like, “You bought a venus fly­trap? To take all the way back to South Car­olina? Where venus fly­traps come from?” But Jenny is a a curi­ous plant per­son her­self, and the fly­trap she picked was a nicely grown spec­i­men that had strik­ing red col­oration unlike the typ­i­cal ver­sions of the species. Like pitcher plants, fly­traps can have their own sets of cool vari­a­tions on the basic theme.

August 11 2009 05:42 am | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: • •

6 Responses to “on the road: visiting california carnivores”

  1. Town Mouse on 11 Aug 2009 at 7:08 am #

    I had no idea! Car­niver­ous plants in Sebastopol. Well, next time I make a trip, I’ll at least have a look. They really are amazing…

  2. Susie on 11 Aug 2009 at 3:02 pm #

    looks like fun.…what a great find!

  3. susan morrison (garden-chick) on 12 Aug 2009 at 7:31 am #

    This series of posts are the first ones that have made me con­sider the value in car­niv­o­rous plants. When we sit out­side in the evenings, I am one of those peo­ple that the bugs love, while my hus­band relaxes bite-free. Not sur­pris­ingly, this makes me quite cranky. If there is a plant guar­an­teed to pre­fer the taste of mos­qui­tos, I’m there!

  4. Barbara E on 13 Aug 2009 at 8:55 pm #

    I am always impressed with the adap­ta­tions that plants (and other liv­ing organ­isms) come up with to thrive in the many dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments of our planet. These plants are just so cool — I love their col­ors and their tricks. Next time we head north, I’ll vote to drive past the winer­ies and head straight for Cal­i­for­nia Car­ni­vores. Well, hope­fully we can do both!

  5. lostlandscape on 14 Aug 2009 at 5:55 am #

    TM, they’re not low water use Cal­i­for­nia natives for the most part, but they’re well worth check­ing out.

    Susie, it WAS a major fun trip.

    Susan, I can empathize since I’m another of those crea­tures that bugs find delec­table. I’m not sure how effec­tive these plants would be to keep down your bug population–I’d guess it’d take a gar­den full of them to make much dif­fer­ence. But what attracts me most to these plants isn’t their bug-catching abil­i­ties as much as their really cool forms.

    Bar­bara, don’t deny your­self the winer­ies, since they’re part of the Sonoma County expe­ri­ence! I’ll be post­ing more on the winery/garden pair­ing that is preva­lent all over that part of the state.

  6. Damon Collingsworth on 02 Oct 2009 at 7:43 pm #

    Thanks for the nice com­ments and shar­ing your beau­ti­ful pic­tures of our nurs­ery. Keep on spread­ing the word.

    Damon and the rest of the crew at Cal­i­for­nia Carnivores

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