Visiting Sarracenia Bogs - May 2021
Recently, I had the fantastic opportunity to visit some amazing bog sites in and around Blackwater state park in the Florida panhandle with my good friend Jeremiah Harris. The trip was amazing and the weather was perfect!
Blackwater is a state forest in the Florida panhandle not far from Pensacola. The bogs this preserve is home to represent some of the most diverse Sarracenia populations in the world! Due to the extensive presence of Sarracenia flava and leucophylla there are many exceptional Moorei to be admired. This time of year however, the flavas are the star of the show! That being said, we were lucky enough to find some really superb leucophylla populations that I can tell would be spectacular come September!
In addition to S. flava and leucophylla, we also saw psittacina as well as many threadleaf sundews (often growing together) and even some butterworts. Many of these sites are extremely threatened, so their locations are kept secret to protect the rare specimens, so please do not request their locations.
If you’d like to simply view all the photos – I’ve placed a gallery in this post that you can scroll through, but if you’re interested in learning more about the sites we encountered, read on!
Site #1 - Tons of flava!
The first site we visited was dominated by flava rugelli – one of my favorite Sarracenia and right in the prime of their season! As we moved further back into the brush, there were more leucophylla, which of course meant the start of some awesome Moorei!
Site #2 - More Moorei!
At the second site there were more pronounced leucophylla stands, leading to even more variety from some of the amazing moorei! We also began to see more flava variety including ornata, rubricorpa and atropurpurea.
Site #3 - Juuust Right!
The third site was hands down my favorite site to visit! So many cool micro environments in this site with the widest variety of plants we saw. We also saw a stand of leucophylla with exceptionally large and red pitchers for mid-Spring. The scenery was also amazing, following seepages all the way down the bog with Sarracenia lining the entire creek!
Bonus Site! Rubra
Lastly, we visited a really cool rubra site! I’m not the biggest rubra guy in the world, but this site was such a cool environment directly off a river and the rubra were in great shape. We also saw psittacina, but much like the leucos of site 3 – these rubra were really impressive for mid-Spring – much better than any in my collection!