Sad Destruction

[buckcity]

Forestry work has destroyed the beautiful plant I was able to photograph
earlier this year.

The plant exhibited all three traits that Barry Rice's faq described including being over fifteen inches high, having pitchers taller than the flowers, and tilted down pitcher mouths.

Memorialized now only in photographs: Sarracenia minor variance okefenokeensis in the Osceola Nation Forest...
Rest in Peace.

[bluemax]

Buckcity - that is sad! Do you think there is any chance that the rhizomes of the plants survived?

- Mark

[Brian Barnes]

Hey Buck,

Indeed it is sad when we see CP habitats such as this being destroyed. Hopefully they are just clearing areas in preparation for prescribed fire. From what I can see, due to competing vegetative overgrowth, the area depicted is pretty much doomed unless they burn it come early Spring.

Thanks for keeping the CP community posted!

Brian Barnes,
ICPS Director of Conservation

[buckcity]

That's correct Brian. There was a prescribed burn on the other side of the road.

The sarracenia I photographed was scraped away or buried under a low mound of soil and compacted.

There is a glimmer of hope for the variety in the Osceola because I believe one plant survived the bulldozers and there are more plants on the other side-but all these plants are currently less than twelve inches high. Maybe with the brush cleared they will reach the twenty plus inches of their lost kin.