First and formost, DO NOT COLLECT WILD SARRACENIA SEED!
Doing so can get you fined several thousand dollars and/or land you in prison.
You want to leave the flower attached to the mother plant for several months after sucessful pollination. Leave it intact until the seed pod starts to crack open, or at least dries to near cracking. Then cut off the stalk and take inside to collect the Sarracenia seed.
Pollinating Sarracenia Flowers
Sarracenia can self pollinate but they need a little help. The flowers will remain open for about a week. If you lift a petal you can see the anthers on the ceiling of the flower. The anthers will release their pollen, which can be seen on the floor of the style. Collect the pollen with a toothpick or small modelers paint brush and deposit it onto each of the stigmas. The stigmas look like tiny hooks on the inside tips of each point of the umbrella style. Click the image for a larger highly detailed picture in a new window.
All you need to do is deposit pollen on the stigmas. Most Sarracenia can be pollinated with their own pollen but cross pollination is best when possible.
This is a flower of S. Alata. The petals (1) must be raised up a bit to gain access to the inside of the umbrella. Peek in, you should see some yellow pollen on the umbrella floor, and dangling from the anther above. Use a modelers paint brush to collect some pollen on the umbrella floor. It will become a very fine yellowish powder. Then just rub the pollen against the stigmas', there are four of them. We generally do this 4 or 5 times over the course of the first week.
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Several weeks after pollination you'll notice the swelling. You can see the ovaries, or seed pod, starting to swell here. It has roughly tripled in size, very noticeable. Do nothing until it dries and browns so the seed has time to develop fully, late fall or early winter.
Collecting Sarracenia Seed
After the petals drop off, the sepal and style remain. The sepals generally lift upward with time. The ovary will keep swelling over the next several weeks. Eventually the seed pod will turn brown and gradually start to crack open, as pictured. This is the time to collect the pod. You MUST leave the seed pod on the stem and connected to the plant for a LONG time. Do NOT remove before the pod has dried. Best to even wait until you see it cracking open, as pictured here. This picture was taken on 10/18/09, generally late October to early November is when the pod will start to crack.
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When time, cut the flower stalk low near the rhizome so it doesn't rot and mold over winter. I take a bowl out with me to place it in as soon as its removed from the plant. That way if there are loose seed your sure to catch them. Once I get it inside, working on a white dinner plate just in case, I cut the style to remove the umbrella. Then I remove most of the stem, generally leaving an inch or so to use as a handle when I work with the pod. You can also remove the sepals if you so desire. If the pod has just started to crack you need not fear loosing seed. But if you waited a bit too long there could be some strays.
Now just drop the seed pod in a small paper bag, zip lock bag, quart jar or anything else to let it dry and finish cracking open. Whatever you use, leave it open so plenty of fresh air can get in to aid with drying. After a few days it will crack open more, eventually the pod skin will crack into quadrants and lift up revealing/dropping the seed. We use our Ga3 mixing containers to hold seed pods and the such, works pretty decent.
After that it's just a matter of collecting the seed. Make sure to work over a white dinner plate. Some may remain "stuck" to the seed pod. Gently scrap with your thumbnail, tweezers, forceps or whatever to free them. But watch out, once freed they can fly.
Sarracenia seed will be brown to reddish tan to tan and about the size of a large pinhead. Not as small as most carnivorous plant seeds. Sarracenia seed will need stratification before it will germinate unless you plant it immediately.
