Earlier this month, Nepenthes master Paul Barden sent me some Nepenthes to try out in The Dome. Now mind you, I don’t have much Nepenthes experience, and with the few Nepenthes that I do have, I just kinda leave alone to do whatever they see fit. Anyway, one of the things that Paul is letting me try my hand at is growing Nepenthes from cuttings! SO RAD! I’m excited to report that a few weeks later, I see the cuttings showing some signs of life! In the photo to the left, you can see the garbled mess of Nepenthes that I have. A few in the photo are pots of cuttings that I chopped up from a N. fusca hybrid vine from Paul. When I checked the pots, one of the cuttings just went all crispy and didn’t do much. It’s the pot in front with that sorry mess of brown foliage – I tossed that one. But as far as the rest of them, I’m seeing positive signs of growth. Awesome!
The cuttings are in a 50/50 mix of long fiber sphagnum moss and perlite. Conditions in the dome are humid and cool. High during the day are in the mid 70’s, and then it dips to 50 during the evening. These are conditions that highlander Nepenthes like. I also have a sprinkler system set up to go off once every hour only during daylight for 2 seconds just to keep it cooler, and humid. Now I don’t know if I should change this frequency but so far, so good.
Something that Paul mentioned to me that another experienced grower told him: Nepenthes don’t live in their roots the way other plants do. In fact, in the wild, many species abandon their terrestrial root system once they have grown advanced vines into the tree canopies, where they become epiphytes. N. truncata and N. veitchii typically do this, and I suspect most species are capable of it, since they need to have a “contingency plan” for times when climbing vines get damaged and cut off from the earthbound roots.
Dude. This really helped me to kinda digest and conceptualize their growth habits. Now, I know I won’t fully understand until I probably get a few years of experience behind me to work and play with this genus, but so far, that really helped me to go in the right direction. I’m all new to this but am having fun so far!
Paul, thanks again! I am looking forward to the awesomeness that your Geinhouse 2.0 has in store!
New growth looking promising for this piece of vine!
On many of the cuttings, a little node/growpoint thing started to appear! If you look close, you can see a small spur type thing forming. I think this is a good sign! YEAH!
Tendril that I left on one of the leaves now getting nice and twisted!
