My Nepenthes garden

[sandgroper]

I love these fascinating plants, I only have a few at the moment but I intend to expand my little nepenthes garden over time. 

[sandgroper]

[palmsOrl]

Your pitcher plants look great sandgroper.  I love the way you have them displayed in the natural setting like that.  You will have to provide an update one of these days.

Nepenthes, along with most other carnivorous plants, are some of the most bizarrely fascinating, specialized members of the kingdom Plantae.  I have never had much luck with Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) and my first couple attempts with Nepenthes, Nepenthes x Coccoinea and Nepethes truncata (back in the late '90s when I was a kid) didn't work out because I kept the plants' root systems too wet.

Now as I revisit the genus, I have an opportunity to get the conditions right for the lowland species and likely the species from medium elevations to thrive and maintain their pitchers.  

I have considered trying a few highland species, like the amazing Nepenthes rajah, figuring they should do well outside from November-March (though humidity would often be an issue during the day).  During the warmer months, I thought that keeping them inside where the temperature is cooler than habitat by day and a lot warmer at night might work, but I don't think it works that way, I think the highlanders need a sharp temperature differential.

I have posted a photo before, but here is an updated photo of my Nepenthes alata, the "Walmart Nepenthes", easy to grow and offered for sale at many garden centers.  I have been growing this one for five years.

Nepethes rafflesiana, a neat lowland species from Borneo.  I believe the color of the pitchers will become darker with time, but I think the pale, albino look is unique and I like it.

Nepenthes sanguinea is, as the species name "sanguinea" denotes, a red-pitchered Nepenthes from moderate to low elevations in parts of Malaysia.  The new pitchers of my new little plant should eventually color up.  This one is supposed to be an especially easy grower.

-Michael

 

[sandgroper]

@palmsOrl Wow mate, you have some fantastic pitcher plants there! They all look very healthy and happy.  We're just coming out of winter here in Southern Australia so my Nepenthes have been quite slow growing for the last few months but I potted a couple of small ones up last weekend. I bought a very small one last November and repotted it into a larger pot and was quite surprised by the growth rate it put on so I've done the same with another couple of small ones.  Another 4 - 6 weeks and small ones will start appearing in plant nurseries again, I intend to buy a heap of them as they're dirt cheap when small and repot them into larger pots with orchid mix, I had great results using that with the small one I did last year so hopefully I'll have a little garden full of them soon! 

[sandgroper]

I have loads of these drosera too, they seed regularly and it seems every seed germinated. They're quite a nice looking little plant and very efficient in catching insects. 

[sandgroper]

This is interesting, I've never seen a nepenthes flower or fruit before but I think I have now! It'll be interesting to see if it produces seed.

[palmsOrl]

I received a few new Nepenthes to try out for my birthday, some or which are cool growers, so these should be smooth sailing until April, then I will have to get creative.

Included in my order is my favorite Nepenthes species in general, noted for producing the largest pitchers in the genus, Nepethes rajah. 

Though my plant is far from mature, large N. rajah produce pitchers holding up to 3.5 liters of water and digestive enzymes and are known to capture prey such as rodents.  No doubt about this plant's carnivory!

-Michael

[palmsOrl]

Another new one, Nepenthes veillardii.  This species has a disjunct distribution compared to most other Nepenthes, occurring in New Caledonia.

The plant has showed evidence of a bit of re-location shock, but within a day, has rebounded and looks flawless.  Now that I look again, it still appears to be sulking a bit.

-Michael

[palmsOrl]

Nepenthes reinwardtiana, a species that should lend itself well to Florida, provided it is protected from chilly winter weather.

The pitcher color is similar to Nepenthes chaniana (see next post), but the pitchers are elongated and narrower in width.  It really is intriguing that Nepethes, on a whole, produce pitchers at such a young age.

-Michael

[tropicbreeze]

On 10/17/2020 at 6:19 PM, sandgroper said:

This is interesting, I've never seen a nepenthes flower or fruit before but I think I have now! It'll be interesting to see if it produces seed.

Those look like male flowers. Generally you'll see distinct ovaries at the base of the flowers if they're female. No seeds on those but if you have a female plant flowering at the same time you can do the pollinating yourself to get seed. Unfortunately they're dioecious.

[palmsOrl]

My four new Nepenthes chaniana, a highland, cool-growing species from Sarawak, Malaysia.  I mentioned a few more details about this lime-green (?) pitchered species in my "For Sale" thread, as I now have four little plants and I wouldn't mind selling a couple.  Otoh, I like to have a few extra examples of unusual plants in-case I lose any.  Enjoy!

 

 

[palmsOrl]

My little porch terrarium set-up to retain a bit of humidity around the seedlings.

I built a clear top for it (really just glued a couple wooden dowels to a clear plastic container to set on top of the bottom of the current container.  

This should both substantially increase humidity levels around the plants and increase daytime temperatures a bit within the structure (and increase the daytime and nighttime temperature differential, since Nepenthes and especially, the highland-dwelling species benefit from this.  Finally, the low-elevation species will benefit from the warmer daytime temperatures as well.  Air circulation should still be adequate and probably optimal for the young plants with the top of the terrarium in place. 

-Michael

 

[palmsOrl]

Here are a few Nepenthes alata cuttings I took from my large, sprawling plant in the hanging basket.  I am rooting these cuttings in my "incubator" terrarium inside, which stays around 86F with both the lights and the heat lamp on.

-Michael

[sandgroper]

On 11/6/2020 at 2:50 AM, palmsOrl said:

Here are a few Nepenthes alata cuttings I took from my large, sprawling plant in the hanging basket.  I am rooting these cuttings in my "incubator" terrarium inside, which stays around 86F with both the lights and the heat lamp on.

-Michael

Fantastic mate,  you've really got some terrific plants there! I'm really interested in how you took and strike the cuttings, are they difficult to propagate using this method? Also, where do you take the cuttings from? I love these plants, they're fascinating and surprisingly colourful.

[palmsOrl]

Thank you sandgroper.  I am really having fun working with these unusual plants.

The cuttings pictured above were taken from a very large Nepenthes alata in a hanging basket (pictured earlier in this thread).  This species is among the easiest to keep in general (though I still haven't ever managed to keep the plant full of healthy pitchers for some reason despite keeping it healthy and growing well), therefore, I figured that getting cuttings to root would be fairly easy.  I simply cut some ends off of the vine-like growths, cutting the ends off in a "v" shape.  I then inserted the cut ends into the same medium in which I used to pot the plant itself (a mix of Vermiculite and sphagnum for N. alata in particular) and placed the potted cuttings into my "incubator", a terrarium that is kept very warm and humid and basically air-tight.  After a couple weeks, they look healthy.  I would have used rooting hormone, but seem to have misplaced it, so I will need to pick up some more.

Since some of my new plants are cool growers and we are still having lows around 70-74F (21-23C), I realized I have a large cooler so the past couple nights I have started placing the cool growers (N. rajah, N. chaniana and N. sanguinea) on a tray in the cooler with a large cold pack on either side of the tray and keeping the plants inside the closed cooler for about 10 hours.  I tested the temperatures at hours one and ten and they stay at a consistent 50F (10C), so this should provide a very simple method to provide the necessary nighttime cool down for the plants, at least until they get large.

[sandgroper]

Thanks for the response mate, I'll have to give it a try!

[palmsOrl]

Not a Nepenthes, but I just picked this up today at Lukas Nursery.  Is it Sarracenia purpurea? Thank you.

-Loke