Renee; UR: Finally making some head way!

Remember RZ stands for Root Zone (6 inches from the plant base)
and C for Contrast (3 feet from the plant base)

Good news everyone! I finally finished my redox and pH tests! Isn't the table lovely? >>>>>>>>

Sadly there are no smoking guns apparent from the table about why the hooded pitcher plants are so sporadic at my site.
At first glance everything appears to be within pH and redox parameters that these plants find acceptable. They love acidic soil that is not heavily compacted. If you remember my last post and the lovely redox chart the higher milli-Volts means more available oxygen and thus less compacted, more aerobic soil.

Now looking at the data in the paired fashion I collected it (RZ-1 compared to C-1 and so on down the number line) the redox potential in the Contrast samples are mostly higher in milli-Volts than the Root Zone samples.  In practical terms this also implies that the soil is looser and probably contains more organic material. Knowing that the site is home to lots of pine trees the organic material is probably pine needles which would help explain why the pH is lower in high redox samples. Really all this table does is confirm what I already suspected and knew. I will have to do some thinking outside of the box to see what other info I can tease out of the data.

Anyway, I got carried away there. A preview of next week: I will have some correlation data and probably some graphs for y'all to see statistically how these numbers relate to one another and what it implies about the soil

Q&A

Q: Joseph Sec1
Thanks for your answer. So what are the favorable weather conditions for this plant? and do they die off when conditions become unfavorable?

A: Sarracenia minor prefers warm, sunny weather with regular afternoon rain storms to keep the soil wet but not flood out the area. So our late spring and summers are the pitcher plant's favorite time of year. These plants are perennials.(plants which go dormant and die back when it starts getting cold then come back when it gets warm like oak trees) They are well adapted to Florida's mild winters and have been shown to benefit like all perennials from the 'rest period' that winter brings. Unfortunately unusually cold winters like we experienced a few years ago can result in damage and even death of the plant. The International Carnivorous Plant Society website has tons of great information about S. minor and other carnivorous plants found in Florida and abroad.