Sarracenia psittacina

A trap built like a lobster pot

Sarracenia psittacina is the only Sarracenia whose pitchers open sideways rather than at the top ^[11]. The pitchers are 8 to 30 cm long, rarely to 40 cm. They radiate from the center of the plant and often rest flat on the ground, sometimes mounding into mats where several growing points intertwine ^[2]. Each is netted with red-purple veins, with white areolae (unpigmented windows) on its outer half and a broad wing 1 to 4 cm wide along one side ^[2].

The business end is the hood. It swells into a ball 2 to 4 cm across, mostly white windows framed by green to deep red-purple tissue. The entrance is a round hole only 0.5 to 1 cm wide, formed where the hood fuses with the rim, and the rim curls inward to make a one-way doorway ^[2]. ICPS compares it to a lobster pot. An insect finds the dark entrance easily from outside. Once inside, it heads for the light coming through the white windows instead of back toward the dark hole, and ends up in the tube ^[12]. A second mechanism then takes over. FNA describes the inner lower half of each pitcher as lined with a mesh of backward-pointing hairs up to 4 mm long that push prey ever deeper. ICPS likens this to a pigeon trap, letting prey move in only one direction ^{[2, 12]}.

Pitchers that work under water

This species grows in some of the wettest habitats in the genus: very wet open bogs, titi bogs, ditches and seepage slopes. Plants are often submerged for periods. FNA suggests the pitchers may then trap aquatic invertebrates, though it states this tentatively ^[2]. A 2011 review of pitcher-plant fluids likewise notes that S. psittacina traps fill with water when its habitat floods. The tall hooded species, such as S. flava and S. leucophylla, usually stay dry inside ^[13].

The plants are easy to miss. In dense vegetation the flat rosettes hide under matted grass and only the flower stalks show ^[2]. In the wettest parts of the Okefenokee Swamp in southeastern Georgia grows a large form with pitchers up to 40 cm long ^[2].

Late flowers over a flat rosette

The pitchers come before the flowers and keep coming in one form all summer. They persist rather than withering in winter, and the plant makes no flat phyllodia ^{[2, 11]}. S. psittacina is usually the last species of the genus to flower; FNA gives March to June ^[2]. The flowers are small for a Sarracenia and slightly fragrant. Maroon-red petals 2 to 4.5 cm long hang around a style disc only 2 to 3 cm across, on stalks 15 to 35 cm tall that mostly stand above the pitchers ^[2].

Where it grows with other species, it hybridizes. FNA lists wild crosses with S. leucophylla (S. ×wrigleyana), S. purpurea (S. ×courtii), S. rubra (S. ×gilpinii) and S. alabamensis subsp. wherryi (S. ×casei) ^[14].

Range, fire and status

The parrot pitcher plant is a Gulf and southern Atlantic coastal plain species. It ranges from eastern Georgia and northeastern Florida west through the Florida panhandle, southern Alabama and southern Mississippi into the edge of Louisiana, from sea level to 60 m ^[2]. Like other Sarracenia of pine savannas, it benefits from fire. In a Louisiana savanna, a prescribed winter burn increased S. psittacina cover in burned plots, while cover declined in unburned ones ^[15].

IUCN has assessed the species for the Red List; see the assessment for its category ^[3]. NatureServe ranks it imperiled in Georgia and vulnerable in Louisiana ^[4], and Florida lists it as Threatened ^[5].

Growing parrot pitcher plants

This is one of the two Sarracenia that ICPS recommends for growing indoors under lights all year, the other being S. rosea ^[7]. Height is the usual obstacle under lights: ICPS says tall species are hard to light from the side, while the pitchers of S. psittacina lie close to the ground ^{[7, 2]}. The growing indoors guide and the grow-light calculator cover setups.

Three points set its care apart from the tall species:

• Soil. ICPS says S. psittacina likes pure peat and short pots. The ICPS seed guide also lists it among the species that prefer a peat mix to live sphagnum ^{[7, 10]}. See carnivorous plant soil.
• Cold. ICPS calls it freeze-sensitive and best adapted to the long seasons and mild winters of the Gulf Coast ^[7]. Of all Sarracenia, it is one of the three most likely to suffer rhizome rot after an early or late freeze. A rotted plant can be saved if some rhizome is still firm and white ^[8]. An ICPS profile of an Ontario bog garden calls it difficult to keep outdoors wherever early and late frosts occur, and treats wintering it outside in the northern US as an unusual success ^[16].
• Old pitchers. Remove them only when they turn brown. Individual pitchers can last up to two years ^[7].

ICPS does not give a separate winter schedule for adult plants kept under lights, but it describes Sarracenia as temperate plants that expect seasons, and warns that moving plants from artificial light to outdoor conditions can stall them ^[9]. The winter dormancy guide compares the options. For young Sarracenia under lights, the seed guide recommends a timer that follows local sunrise and sunset, so plants do not fall out of step with the seasons and lose a year of growth when moved outside ^[10].