Hooded Pitcherplant

Description:

Hooded pitcherplant is a carnivorous, perennial herb. The hollow, trumpet-shaped leaves (pitchers), which persist through the winter, are ascending, green at the base, sometimes red above with conspicuous translucent “windows” toward the apex (top). The outer surface of the pitcher hood is bronze-red, or somewhat streaked with bronze-red while the inner surface is strongly marked with reddish, reticulate venation with some glandular exudate and retrosely short-strigose. The pitchers are 12 to 40 cm in height (occasionally longer), 1 to 4 cm in width at the orifice (pitcher opening), gradually narrowed to the base, and have hoods that are bent downward over the orifice. The pitchers are sparsely and unevenly very short-pubescent exteriorly and smooth and somewhat slick internally. From March to May, nodding, solitary flowers develop on leafless stalks that equal or exceed the height of the pitchers. The five sepals are greenish-yellow, 1.5 to 3.5 cm in length and persist at the base of the fruit. The five yellow petals are ovate, 2.5 to 4.0 cm in length, and quickly fall off. The umbrella-shaped style (style-disk), a distinctive characteristic of the pitcherplant flower, is 2 to 3 cm in diameter in this species. From June to July the fruit, a globose capsule is produced. The capsule is 0.8 to 1.8 cm in diameter, containing numerous seeds (Patrick et. al. 1995).

Habitat:

Hooded pitcherplant inhabits acidic soils of open bogs, wet savannas, pond margins, low areas in pine flatwoods, sphagnum seeps or red maple - blackgum swamps, and sloughs and ditches (Patrick et. al. 1995). The above pitcher plant images were taken at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Range:

Hooded pitcherplant is found in the Coastal Plain from southeastern North Carolina to the central Panhandle of Florida, across southern Georgia and to just west of the Apalachicola River in the Florida Panhandle (Godfrey and Wooten 1981).