About a half year or so ago I got Sarracenia flava from a garden center and planted it in a mix of soil from the pot it came in (which was a lot of sphagnum moss I think) and around that the loamy sand from my own property for bulk in a self-watering container. Back then it was just three flowers (you can see the dried remnants of those in the very top left; they flower at a different time than they feed to not waste their efforts by making pollen to spread out and then eating the critter they put it on) and since then obviously it has grown a prodigious number of traps and also some non-trap phyllodia leaves.

Is anyone familiar with Sarracenia enough to know why so many traps and phyllodia seem crooked or wrinkly? Most Sarracenia flava that I see out and about or planted by other people seem more straight and “opened up” internally. It doesn’t seem to be harming the plant to a great extent as far as I can tell because it has still grown tremendously, but it is kind of weird. Example below of a more normal looking version I saw in cultivation at the Stanley Rehder carnivorous plant garden in NC, as you can see they are basically straight tall and full rather than having the kind of deformed look that mine do:

Also this is how they look in actual nature from pictures in the FloraQuest app by the Flora of the Southeastern United States (FSUS) people:

Just asking concerning the crooked/wrinkliness. I am not concerned about the brown parts on mine. When traps fill up with insects (and almost all of mine’s traps are like chimneys stacked high of fly corpses inside) the excess nitrogen from them has potential to scald the trap locally and if that scalding forms a full ring then the trap above that ring dies. Also the lids have a tendency to get a bit scorched by strong sun at times. But traps are disposable so no big deal as long as the roots aren’t scalded (and I’ve made sure to never fertilize the plant and used the low nutrient loamy sand from my backyard to keep the initial nutrients low). For some other info I always keep it moist if the rain is not enough (you can see some of the moisture loving native Diodia virginiana sprung up in the bottom) and it gets strong afternoon sun. I live in about the center of its native range although the conditions are too dry to grow it properly at my site in particular hence the container to retain water.

It’s hard to see in the picture but this partridge pea has multiple branches constituting probably half or more of the plant overall that partly snapped and fell with only like a third of the contact remaining but the branches are very much green and even still flowering and fruiting despite that situation a week and a half later amidst the summer heat. (It broke in a storm after adding weight by vigorously re-flowering to be almost all yellow after the cloudless sulphur caterpillars ate up all the older blooms… not as many flowers anywhere on it now that the caterpillars came back in force though). Meanwhile my wife’s potted Mimosa pudica died after a single day of not adding water when we noticed some parts of had fungal growth and tried to cut back on moisture…

Which of the plants you enjoy are clinging vigorously to life? Or, which ones not so much.

Pictures below:

Have a longleaf pine I’ve been trying to grow in the SC Sandhills which has mostly been a trooper but suddenly a lot of the leaves turned brown and the remaining ones turned yellow. This is what also happened for the only other one on the property before it gave up and died very shortly thereafter the better part of a month ago.

Not sure what precisely is the cause but I imagine lacking water is the issue since we’re having very hot days and are still in a drought, although it weathered much more severe drought earlier this year no prob maybe the sheer heat pushes it over the edge. It was planted in the fall of last year so some but not a ton of time to build up the roots (which were also probably jacked up from curling around in a pot up until then anyway although I tried to gently break up the binding of the root ball to itself when I replanted it). I have been giving it supplemental water but if it’s doing this I imagine not enough.

Is it possible to bring a pine back from the brink when its already in this state by making sure it gets water every day or would you call it hopeless at this stage? Anyone have miracle stories? … if not, honestly I should try to get one of the plugs for it at a small stage if I need to try again so that it can grow the taproot properly instead of having to fix a messed up one… just sentimental because this is one of the first plants I tried to put in so I want to save it if I can but it’s following a trajectory I saw before.