Field Trip: The South!

[thez_yo]

Trip report time!

I went on a trip led by the ever adventurous Ozzy, with a couple of the other NASC members (Ozzy being the serving NASC Prez!). We all met up in Alabama, and started the trip with a few S.alata sites in Southeast Mississippi and worked our way East through Southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle with tons of S.flava, then up to the Okefenokee in Southern Georgia in hunt of the giant S.minor, and up through South and then finally North Carolina to check out the famous Dionaea. All said, we saw at least 6 Species of Sarracenia, 3 of Drosera, 1 of Utricularia, and 1 of Pinguicula. Maybe we saw more, but the USA temperates aren't my speciality (and by that I mean, that whole S.rubra-ish complex and most Pings all look the same to me...).

I'm always interested in the critters and companion plants hanging around too, so I've included pictures of those here. There were several species of spiders, for example, that kept recurring state to state, which I thought was pretty neat. There's a spiny green spider that seems to hang out on the taller of the Sarracenia species that kept cropping up (S.flava & S.leucophylla), quite photogenically, so I kept taking pictures of it.

It was a pretty great trip. Hot, sweaty, buggy, and at times smelly (in those peat bogs), but great! Please enjoy the pics

Double-tipped D.filiformis. I'd never seen that before this trip.

The locals (this is at 'The Shed' restaurant lot)

It was raining just a little bit...

I got lost in the swamp. Luckily I had my GPS on me... all I saw on the way back was lots of knee-deep water and the most frightening spiders imaginable.

I walked into this one. Nope!!!

This is a really nice site in Alabama. It's really nice because S.leucophylla is my favourite

Here's that nice green spiny spider.

A S.leucophylla & S.purpurea hybrid.

You just gotta get those down-the-pitcher shots.

...to be continued...

 

[thez_yo]

This one wasn't so scary. Somehow jumping spiders are always just plain cute.

Yay Splinter Hill bog preserve! This is the flat one... there's a more hilly one across the road that I haven't been to since 2012, but the last time I tried I got a nasty bug bite for my efforts so maybe I'll just continue avoiding it...

It had some nice S.leuco x purp hybrids too.

A nice red hybrid.

Your local friendly rope with a face...

Up next was Week's bog preserve:

At the welcome center they've got dolphin and manatee skeletons.

They've got a few live critters in tanks in the back, including hermit crabs.

It was a little smoky because they've been working on a controlled burn. Burning is important to the local eco-system, to clear out the taller growth and let the smaller plants have a turn.

Seriously, all the scary spiders...

We passed back through the welcome center after a trip around the boardwalk..

and saw that they had a little natural history room open (school fieldtrip was showing up in a few)

DO NOT WANT

So off to see the actual bog-

 

[thez_yo]

The plants weren't quite so dense so it was a little hard to pick them out.

Off to see Whiting Field. They've got some nice bridges to traverse all that water.

There were some nice mushrooms in the forested part of the trail.

I think they call these something like Caribou Moss? It's clumps of .. lichens I think that just hang out on the ground in the forest.

Yay, the swamp!

Off to the next site!

 

[thez_yo]

A lot of these sites we just got road coordinates and had to go on the hunt.. so we started on the left...

These plants definitely don't look like companion plants.

...but I wonder what that yellow patch up ahead is on the right? Ozzy's going there so it must be the right direction...

Jackpot!

Nice hybrids here too. S.flava and purpurea for this one.

S.flava and leucophylla for this one. I was on the hunt for where the leucos were hiding for a little while...

Found them! Man this is a nice one and I wish I could have seen it before the brown stripe happened.

The purps were a little closer to the lake.

..Another set of coordinates and another hunt.

Saw a lot of these on the drier sections around where the S.flava grew, but not exactly in the same spot.

Nope, just another spidey.

So off to another site!

We didn't find the pitchers that were supposedly here (just one or two leuco plants) but there was some nice sphag and sundews around the edge.

So there was a rescue a couple years ago from a site that had a lot of building activity going on. They got a lot of plants, but there's still a good small thriving community going on once you get past the parking lot:

 

[thez_yo]

It's super swampy in the back.

Utrics out in the water-

Ok, so we moved on. Something looked sorta-right on a terrain map, so we checked it out...

Hmmm, are they trying to trap CP hunters? Seems about the right size trap, but maybe they should put some flavas in the bucket or something...

But we didn't find anything.

So on to the next site, and one of my favourites, the red filiformis site!

The whole thing is yellow. Some plants are just the coolest.

Sometimes it's hard to decide where you can step next.

Ok, the next site I was definitely happy to have had knee-high boots.

 

[thez_yo]

Hmmm, these definitely don't belong in Florida.

Off to the red S.flava site!

Awww it's babies!

So we got another set of coordinates. Well, we did find a dead trash panda...

So back into the car for the next coords. Hmm, I wonder what that yellow patch is?

If I didn't see this thing eating off a pitcher, I'd definitely run away from it. It looks sting-y.

To the left...

To the right...

 

[thez_yo]

Time for the giants!

definitely tiny...

still pretty small...

They've got a nice big skeleton of a gator at the welcome center.

Ok, finally something big!

Some scary factories y'all've got.

A patch of S.minor in someone's front yard. I guess it used to be two patches.

Ok, off to another site. This one was a cut out of the forest for some power lines, and a bunch of Sarracenia took over. Too cool! We had Barry and Beth join us for S & N Carolina.

I've got a camera that can go under water, so I took some underwater D.intermedia pics.

I think these are some tiny S.rubras. These are rubras, right guys?

 

[thez_yo]

The colour variation is so neat. The ones closest are more of a yellow S.minor and the other patches are orange to red. All in a power-lines cut out!

All the spideys.

The next site was the side of the road, and in knee-deep standing water. So much fun!

Uh ohes...

I was soaking wet by this point. But so many plants!

Ok, the thunderstorm got scary close. Time to drive off again. I guess this is where trees go to die.

The next site was a good 4 hours away.

Look at how tall the S.flava are!

One last pic of that big green purp on the way out.

 

[thez_yo]

And just up the street...

On the side that didn't have CPs growing on it:

Something stung my leg. Serious nasty welts for the following week. I really have no idea what it was, but if you go into that field, wear some good tall boots!

Ok, time for more adventuring!

Its eating itself!

 

[thez_yo]

Just another rope...

When the water level is higher at this site, it covers the bottoms of the trees.

Our last site, and it was amazing!

 

[thez_yo]

I wonder what's down there...

VFTs!

So huge!

The other side of the field without CPs in it:

Strange looking twig on that plant...

With a face...

That keeps following me

So ferocious!

I hope you had as good a time looking over the photos as I had in the field! I tried taking video but... I'm not so great at it. Maybe next time.

Thanks again Ozzy!

 

[hcarlton]

D. tracyi, rosea hybrids, colorful cupreas, red filiformis.....but I'm afraid I'm most enamored by the snakes

 

[BigBella]

Nice travelogue . . .

I especially appreciated your choice in rental car -- that jacked-up truck in that parking lot shot, which just screamed, "Zuzana!"

 

[Shadowtski]

Breathtaking!
I particularly loved the Drosera pictures.
Now those are the type of vacation photos I could look at indefinitely.

Good growing,
Mike

 

[Grey Moss]

That mantis is really cool. I wonder if it managed to snag any of the bugs that came to visit the plants.

 

[Dexenthes]

Epic post!!

Thanks for sharing so many awesome sights with us. So many great plants. . .

 

[Flip_Side_the_Pint]

Wow! just Wow! thank you for taking the time to post all these wonderful photos! Its always a very special thing to see CPS growing in situ. Growing CPS by themselves you don't realize how much competition they have to deal with out in the wild and how resilient these plants can probably be.

I especially liked seeing all the other fauna that seems to be attracted to the plants. I really enjoyed the bumble bee pictures. I've been really into bumble bees in particular lately.

How did they VTF's get there?

 

[hcarlton]

Prevailing accepted theory is that someone (many use the name "Old Man Northrop") spread seeds in the regions of FL where they're found, and they naturalized...

 

[Tanukimo]

Amazing photos! I really like the shots of the Drosera underwater.

 

[Not a Number]

Poor trashy. Musta et too many S. flava pithers or something.

Look at all the dews and S. minor!