tiles


Note:  Do not rely on this information. It is very old.

Sarracenia

Sarracenia, a small genus of North American plants known as side-saddle flowers, the type of the order Sarraceniaceae, a dicotyledonous family allied to the water-lilies. There are six or seven species and various hybrids, inhabiting the swamps of the Mississippi Valley and extending into Canada. They have a rosette of pitcher-shaped radical leaves and solitary flowers. The pitchers have a honey-secreting external flange, and secrete water in which insects are drowned. Downward-pointing hairs detain these insects, and glands on the lower part of the inner surface absorb the products of their decay. There is no true digestion. Moths lay eggs in the putrefying mass, the stench from which, where these plants cover acres of swamp, is unbearable; and birds slit the rotting pitchers for the sake of the maggots, so that probably a large portion of the orgunic matter is absorbed as a manure by the roots. The flowers have five imbricate sepals, five petals, numerous hypogynous stamens, and a five-chambered ovary, the umbrella-like expansion of its style giving the plant its popular name. S. purpurea is half-hardy, and the other species are greenhouse plants. The allied monotypic genera Darlingtonia and Heliamphora inhabit California and British Guiana respectively.