Nepenthes ventricosa pup

[1joyceh]

A while back, my ventricosa grew a pup, which I removed and gave to jpyerry, at our plant exchange a while back. At the time, a new pup was coming up....well, she is growing crazy!! That is a 4 inch pot, and looks like it is time to move the pup out.....I hope your baby is doing as well Justin!!
The secret, if you ask, would be to just leave her alone...water a couple times a week...mist daily, and once in a blue moon, if no bugs are around, a weak solution of dyna-gro....the advice was given to me by a carnivorous plant grower I know...his advice has been spot on

[terra_australis]

I was quite amazed to find my one eating snails. The snails seemed to go in the pitchers for shelter but fairly often would end up in the drink and slowly become a tasty soup for the plant.

[pikkumyy]

i think i've put mine in a mix thats too open, i may have to redo it, what do you two have yours potted in?

[lmartiny]

What do you mean by a pup? I have tried rooting a piece a couple of different ways with no success. I'd love a brief lesson please.
My plant is a few years old now and was a gift. I repotted it to a ten inch hanging pot about 2-3 years ago. It hangs about three feet long. It grows outside. It does like to stay moist. But has survived neglect.

[1joyceh]

not sure, if 'pup' is the technically correct name for it, but have heard them called that...a baby that grows next to 'Mom'...have also heard them called 'volunteers'.....
well, my cutting experience with them, mixed results....jpyerry has had better results....I have one of his sucesses
my latest maxima cutting is looking ok....cut 3-4 inches off the top....cut each leaf in half to reduce stress/water loss, dip in cloning gel, feed a root stimulating formula....light, 16 hrs....mist daily...keep moist....
oh...and Michael, I use ground peat....that's it....
and...lmartiny....you may have several individual plants in your pot already....some types seem to produce more and more plants....I have noticed maxima putting out some plantlets already....OH YEAH!!!

[jpyerry]

Joyce, my ventricosa is doing well it is not pitchering yet, but it is putting out new leaves, Thanks!

Pup is good non-technical name for the offshoots of the plant, rosette is another non-technical for them. But, as far as an anatomical correct name, they are simply stems, there is one slight differentiating term, should the stem form beneath the media, they are referred to as basal stems. It should be noted that some Nepenthes also develop runners beneath the soil and completely new plants can form from the runners.

My method that I have found to be succesful in rooting cuttings is thus:
1) Choose the end of the stem where you want to cut so that you have about 3-4 leaves (it is preferable to use the end of the stem so that your plant will have a growing point, it is further preferable to choose an area of the stem where new stems are forming, you can find such areas by examining the area where the leaf petiole meets the stem and if you see a growth coming out of the mainstem you have a good chance this stem will become a new branch). Also, if you get a new stem growth then you might get a plant that will produce lower and upper pitchers (when you root a stem that is in climbing mode, most often you will get only upper pitchers).

2) Make your cut across the stem, some people prefer to cut with scissors, some with razor or scalpel. I generally use scissors at this stage, because it is a little easier and I am going to be cutting into my cutting a little more anyway in the near future. If you won't be dipping the cutting immediately, place it in some distilled water to reduce the possibility of an air embolus. Oh, and make sure all of your tools have at least been low level sterilized (bleach, Physan 20, Madacide, etc), if you have an autoclave, great but most people don't (I know I don't).

3) From this point forward cuts should be made with a scalpel or razor. Take the cutting and if you cut with scissors initially recut the bottom of the stem with the razor or scalpel (the idea here is that scissors will crush the cells, and a crushed cell is a dead cell). Then, cut the stem so that you split the stem in half for about an inch to an inch and a half. The idea is that you want to expose a greater amount of the cambium layer.

4) Cut the lowest leaf off the stem in such a way that the leaf is completely flush with the stem, once again we are trying to expose as much of the cambium as possible.

5) Starting maybe a quarter of an away from the lowest leaf (the one you just removed) make superficial cuts just enough to remove the skin of the stem, and then strip the skin of the stem all the way down to where the stem was initially cut. Do this circumferentially. Again, this is to expose the cambium layer.

6) With the exception of the top two leaves (ie the new leaf that should be growing and the next one back), cut the leaves in half transversely so that the leaves are now a little less than half of their original length. The reason we do this is to reduce transpiration.

7) Dip the stem's cut areas in a rooting gel, my personal preference is Clonex, I've been using it for about a year now and have had much better luck with it than rooting powders.

8) Prepare a small pot (I normally use 3" or 4" pots) of long fiber sphagnum moss (but you can use whatever media you like, LFS is my preference for Nepenthes) that has been soaked (squeeze out extra water, you don't want it waterlogged just moist) in distilled water with K-L-N Rooting Solution and Physan 20 (the cutting is very vulnerable to fungal attacks at this stage, the KLN is obvious).

9) Place the pot with the plant in a Ziplock bag or humidity dome (high humidity is critical at this stage). Put the plant under lights, I use T5HO lights, the plant was placed about a foot away, the Ziplock is a good light diffuser so you can put the plant a little closer to the lights than you would if the plant were not in a bag, but not too close, you might have to experiment a bit with this. I would not recommend giving the plant full sun, as it would be too much light and would drive temperatures in the bag to lethally high levels.

10) Every couple of weeks take the plant out and check if roots have developed, you can do this by giving the plant a gentle tug, if no resistance is encountered no roots are there, if there is a little resistance roots are forming, if there is significant resistance then you have a significant amount of roots.

11) After you are sure the plant has enough roots to survive (I found that I had enough by the time I hit 8-10 weeks), then you will want to start hardening the plant off to a lower humidity. I did this by opening the ziplock bag little by little over the course a week or so.

12) Monitor the plant, if it starts to look dehydrated within a few hours of being removed from the bag, it probably needs more time in the ziplock. If it looks healthy and starts to put on new growths for you, then you were succesful! Start caring for the plant as you would a mature plant.

Well, that's how I root Nepenthes cuttings. I hope you found it helpful. The next time I do a cutting, I will take photographs of each step, so that I can illustrate what I am trying to say.

Justin

[1joyceh]

Excellent Justin!!!
Hope this helps anyone trying cloning for the 1st time....
Pictures would be fantastic Justin!!!

[Anisa]

Thank you Justin for sharing your method. I tried to propagate Nephentes before but was not successful.

[pikkumyy]

Originally Posted by 1joyceh

oh...and Michael, I use ground peat....that's it....

thanks joyce, i have some carnivorous mix but it says its for dionea, drosera, and trumpet pitchers, so i didnt think it was ok for the nepenthes. i think the mix is just ground peat with a little bit of perlite, i've got to repot a couple of orchids today so i'll do the nepenthes at the same time (i'll have to get a bit of fly screen for the bottom of the pot because it would just wash out) and the plant had a fairly terrible root system because it had been sitting in water so most of the roots had rotted away so it's in the smalles pot that i've got which is a terracotta pot slightly smaller then a tea cup

thanks so much for the help joyce.

[1joyceh]

You'll have to post some pictures Michael after you repot!! If it is just peat and a little perlite, that should be fine...I would not use the terracotta pot...dries out too quickly, for me...always use plastic

[pikkumyy]

Originally Posted by 1joyceh

You'll have to post some pictures Michael after you repot!! If it is just peat and a little perlite, that should be fine...I would not use the terracotta pot...dries out too quickly, for me...always use plastic

i'll take some in the morning, and the terracotta doesnt really bother me because i'll just water it more, you know what im like joyce

[1joyceh]

Yes Michael....LOL...I know you'll be watering !!
Soon, what will you have to do though?? With your new irrigation system, all the work will be done for you