Abstract
Sarracenia hybridization and genetics have been my interest since early 1990s. A cultivar looking like Sarracenia 'Adrian Slack' was my dream plant for a long time; I wanted to create such a plant and name it after my wonderful wife.
When I opened the envelope with December issue of CPN in 2000, my jaw just fell to the ground: "Somebody else made it!". I read immediately that this splendid cultivar was named after Adrian Slack and it is a natural creation in fact.
Although it has been nearly 20 years since Sarracenia 'Adrian Slack' (ADS later in text) was described, it is still one of the most elegant Sarracenia cultivars. It was obvious to be a superior clone of natural hybrid between Sarracenia flava and S. leucophylla.
According to its original description ADS has inherited its fenestration after S. leucophylla and deep red veins after S. flava (Hanrahan & Meyers- Rice 2000). Heavily veined types of S. flava (as putative donors of intense venation) are referred to as Sarracenia flava var. ornata (Hort.
Bull ex W. Robinson).
Exceptional beauty and transatlantic origin (from my point of view) together made absolutely clear it will be very difficult and pretty expensive to get a piece of this cultivar into my personal collection. Although it took me 11 years to get my personal "copy" of ADS, my creative fingers got fulfilled a bit earlier.
I visited United Kingdom and the great collection of my good friend Mike King in the end of April 2006. I immediately spotted the new jewel in his collection, although the pitchers were just opening.
And it was just in bloom! Most likely the first flowering of ADS in Europe! Mike was so kind and he allowed me to collect all of its pollen into prepared microtubes. In my collection I pollinated several carefully chosen flowers in order to obtain an offspring of similar qualities like original ADS.
Results of these first eight crossings were seriously surprising to me as the offspring segregated in many more color types than expected. Moreover, these color types were present in certain frequency patterns.
Most of these findings were observed repeatedly in countless crosses and backcrosses I performed using ADS since that time. Therefore, I decided to share this experience with all the CP community in this article.