Q: About Sarracenia psittacina, the parrot pitcher plant

• Typical form
• Flowers
• Pitcher opening
• Pitchers

A: Sarracenia psittacina is the most deviant plant in the genus. By that, I mean that it really breaks in form from the others, and has a completely different pitcher shape and trapping strategy. Its genus name refers to the fact that its globose head looks like the head of a psittacine (parrot). This is also the origin of its most frequently used common name.

Sarracenia psittacina is a small plant that usually keeps its pitchers tightly against the ground in a flat, prostrate rosette. The pitcher tubes are horizontal. The pitcher mouth is no longer a large, gaping hole. Instead, the pitcher lid is dramatically modified, and the pitcher mouth is transmogrified into a tunnel allowing access to a large, roughly globose chamber. Once an insect crawls into the pitcher, the exit path is hard to return to. Meanwhile, the horizontal pitcher tube seems to promise escape but is actually a one-way trip into an increasingly narrow tube with hairs that prohibit escape.

The entire plant is brightly pigmented to attract prey. To help encourage prey to wander into the trap, the globose pitcher top is adorned with light-transmitting fenestrations. Also, the pitcher ala is expanded into a large, vertical wall that directs crawling insects into the trap opening.

Since the trapping system is so different from other Sarracenia, this plant is considered a "lobster pot" carnivore instead of a pitfall trap. Incidentally, this kind of trap would function even if submerged, and since the plant may be submerged during floods it is often suggested that it functions as an aquatic hunter during such times. Certainly, Schnell (2002) noted the capture of "water bugs" during floods.

• 'Green Rosette'
• Reduced alas
• Erect pitchers
• Semi-erect pitchers

Strangely, S. psittacina quite often produces leaves that are semi-erect. Also, the leaf ala is sometimes extremely reduced. I have no explanation for such behaviors.

The flower is usually small and red, but completely anthocyanin-free and therefore green-flowering clones have been found in both Alabama (Baldwin County) and Florida (Gulf County); this pigmentation variant has been given the cultivar name S. psittacina 'Green Rosette.' Another Florida specimen from Bay County supposedly has normally pigmented leaves, but yellow flowers. By their description, I am not sure if the discoverers actually meant to indicate a plant with normal leaves but green flowers. I would be interested in hearing if this plant is still in cultivation!

I have been given plants purported to have yellow or even orange flowers, but when these were grown in properly well-lit conditions, they produced regular red flowers. I am confident these are just mix-ups in cultivation.

There are other coloration varieties of this plant, but none have been given names. Some of these are deeply red throughout, others have very little red pigmentation. Some plants have an orangelike cast to them. In Gulf county (Florida), plants have been detected that are "veinless" and "semi-veinless" (terminology I describe more on the FAQ page on S. purpurea).

The largest plants I have ever seen were from Perdido and Seminole (Alabama). In the Okefenokee Swamp, the plants tend to be large and are referred to as being "giants". In the examples of this that I have seen, the gigantism was not as dramatic as the one that earned varietal status for S. minor var. okefenokeensis, but maybe I just have not seen the really "giant" S. psittacina plants in the Swamp.

In the wild, S. psittacina occurs in Georgia; the Florida panhandle; and the Gulf Coast from Alabama and Mississippi to a tiny bit of far eastern Louisiana (St. Tammany and Tangipahoa Parishes). Reports for it in central Louisiana are apparently bogus. There are records of it in eastern Florida (Nassau and Baker Counties), near where the Okefenokee Swamp borders on the state; I have seen collections from Nassau County made in 2000 (FSU), but I do not know if it still exists in Baker County.

The conservation challenges facing S. psittacina are the same as those facing the rest of the genus Sarracenia: habitat destruction and degradation. Since it is so short it can escape the blades of the mowing equipment used on road edges; I have seen it growing well in mow strips in the Florida panhandle where other Sarracenia had been extirpated.

Page citations: Mazur, C.J. & Lechtman, J. 2005; McDaniel, S. 1971; Rice, B.A. 2006a; Schnell, D.E. 2002a; Sheridan, P. & Scholl, B. 1993.