Sarracenia purpurea subsp. venosa (Raf.) Wherry

Sarracenia purpurea subsp. venosa is the southern form of the purple pitcher plant, native to the wet pine savannas and seepage bogs of the Atlantic Coastal Plain from New Jersey south through the Carolinas and Georgia. It forms a low, ground-hugging rosette of squat, urn-shaped pitchers — green and patterned with maroon veins, ten to twenty-five centimetres long — that fill with rainwater and drown small insects, which the plant then digests with the help of a community of microbes living in the trapped water. Unlike the northern subspecies, the southern form tolerates warmer year-round conditions and does not strictly require a winter freeze, though a short cool rest in winter encourages strong spring flowering. In late spring it sends up a slender stalk bearing a single dark-red, slightly fragrant nodding flower. It does best in a bright open setup — a sun-soaked bog terrarium or tray garden — with its roots sitting in shallow rainwater on acidic peat-and-sand mix.