About a half year or so ago I got Sarracenia flava from a garden center and planted it in a mix of soil from the pot it came in (which was a lot of sphagnum moss I think) and around that the loamy sand from my own property for bulk in a self-watering container. Back then it was just three flowers (you can see the dried remnants of those in the very top left; they flower at a different time than they feed to not waste their efforts by making pollen to spread out and then eating the critter they put it on) and since then obviously it has grown a prodigious number of traps and also some non-trap phyllodia leaves.
Is anyone familiar with Sarracenia enough to know why so many traps and phyllodia seem crooked or wrinkly? Most Sarracenia flava that I see out and about or planted by other people seem more straight and “opened up” internally. It doesn’t seem to be harming the plant to a great extent as far as I can tell because it has still grown tremendously, but it is kind of weird. Example below of a more normal looking version I saw in cultivation at the Stanley Rehder carnivorous plant garden in NC, as you can see they are basically straight tall and full rather than having the kind of deformed look that mine do:
Also this is how they look in actual nature from pictures in the FloraQuest app by the Flora of the Southeastern United States (FSUS) people:
Just asking concerning the crooked/wrinkliness. I am not concerned about the brown parts on mine. When traps fill up with insects (and almost all of mine’s traps are like chimneys stacked high of fly corpses inside) the excess nitrogen from them has potential to scald the trap locally and if that scalding forms a full ring then the trap above that ring dies. Also the lids have a tendency to get a bit scorched by strong sun at times. But traps are disposable so no big deal as long as the roots aren’t scalded (and I’ve made sure to never fertilize the plant and used the low nutrient loamy sand from my backyard to keep the initial nutrients low). For some other info I always keep it moist if the rain is not enough (you can see some of the moisture loving native Diodia virginiana sprung up in the bottom) and it gets strong afternoon sun. I live in about the center of its native range although the conditions are too dry to grow it properly at my site in particular hence the container to retain water.
My vote goes to soil toxicity.
Most carnivorous plants evolved carnivory in response to poor soil nutrient availability. Along the way, they also came to be very sensitive to soil nutrient levels (too many nutrients in the soil can actually be toxic to them).
For that reason, most carnivorous plants, especially species that naturally grow in bogs (like Sarracenia), should be grown in very nutrient-poor soil, and watered with very pure water. 50/50 pure peat and quartz sand (not builders sand, etc; that often has a lot of minerals) or perlite is usually the easiest and most effective. And the water you use should be very very clean; when I grew carnivores (I had close to 1000 of them), I used a reverse osmosis unit, getting the water to 0tds (zero total dissolved solids, essentially distilled water).
Soil from around your house probably contains too many nutrients, and if you're watering with tap water, that only compounds the issue (especially chlorinated water).
Carnivorous plants can be very finicky and, as a result, are kind of niche. SUPER cool plants, though, and they're highly rewarding when you get it right.
It’s possible the soil could have too many nutrients even with it being from the largely poor Fuquay sand soil mixed with the moss it came in, and I have been supplementing it with tap water when the rain is not enough which is not great either. That said, based on my readings, if those were going to be an issue those should probably have resulted in more dramatic problems rather than just weird shapes while still growing robustly half a year later? Like chlorosis, bleaching, mushy roots and so on while declining in health and having traps die off in weeks seems to be the consensus I’m reading though maybe I’m misinterpreting that info.
Another thing that helps out is that the self-watering container has an overflow line in the interior that excessive rain can reach after passing through the soil. So any time it rains, when that excess of water is teying to exit the pot it necessarily scrubs out minerals and salts that had reached higher concentrations are those are most likely to be peeled off by the water. So although watering with tab water adds dissolved salts the rains help to reset that.
Another commenter mentioned pests and I looked up thrip damage. I posted a picture under that post and it looks incredibly similar in my eyes to what I’m seeing here with my plant although I have not yet confirmed the presence of thrips.