Jan: I was thinking about whether or not this deserved publication.
You're more involved with the literature than I am---has this already
been beaten to the ground? I think we should try more species first.
I'll experiment with any plants I find in the S.E. US when I'm travelling.
I've not been successful with _U.purpurea_ the few times I've grown it
(read: killed it), and my _U.resupinata_ is very shy to flower. So I
can't test these species.
I think an obvious reason these plants exhibit stigmatic motility is to
insure that a pollinator would have easy access to the pollen, and that
the stigma would be less likely to be selfed after a pollinator has entered
the flower and deposited pollen from another plant. But since the motion is
slow, and insects are not, there are problems with this model. An important
observation to make is how long the stigmatic lobe remains reflexed.
Jan: By your key it looks like seed shape, peduncle base, and flower number
is a good triad to use in identifying these. The flower number may be
a little less reliable because more floriferous plants are more likely to
be grown, so plants in cultivation would be biased towards those with
more flowers.
>sized plants; note: THERE ARE NEVER AVERAGE SIZED PLANTS IN CULTURE as a
>consequence of Murphy's law for gardeners 8-)).
Indeed. If you made projections from my collection, you'd think that
_S.oreophila_ and _S.rubra jonesii_ were terribly common plants, and that
a large percentage of _Sarracenia_ are anthocyanin free!
Back on Utrics for a moment, I recently got a nice shipment of plants
in trade, including _U.aureomaculata_, and a pair of _U.livida_ clumps,
one from Africa and the other from Mexico. I am interested to see if they
will hybridize---I've wanted to try this experiment ever since P.Taylor
suggested it.
B