my Neps

[funkychips]

Hi guys, I promised to post pics of my collection. Here they are:

[funkychips]

[funkychips]

[bifurcatum]

Nice and healthy neps!
Thanks for sharing the pictures.

[hongrui]

nice neps! love the red x'Miranda'.

[caseyhoo]

:oThose are nice Neps. you have there... Nice color!!!!

[funkychips]

Thanks guys..yep hongrui...x miranda is my favourite.
FYI these are pics taken before renovation of my front porch is made. Because of the awning, less sunlight comes in than before, and all except rafflesianas have less pitchers now . The red on the x ventrata is due to alot of full sun and lots of moisture (used to have a water trough containing water plants, now removed).

[tarence]

Lovely healthy neps......looks like you have put in a lot of effort, funkychips....keep up the good work.....

[artificialive]

Hi funkychips,
ur neps look soooo healthy congrats!
Keep up the good work from me too!

[funkychips]

Thanks guys. Some plants were actually donated by my friend who used to live a few blocks down from my house. Chin Han, if you are browsing in this forum, thanks for the plants! ;D

[David]

funkychips,

Love your xventrata and rafflesianas. How big are the rafflesianas? They look so huge. Your xventrata also has a very nice red/orange colour on its pitchers. Usually the redish colour fades away when we cultivate them in lowland conditions but yours seem more redish than mine. Well done man!

The first picture, is it xmiranda? Nicely taken care off.

Do you have alot of plants in your garden that makes the air around the plants more humid than the usual hot dry KL air? I'm asking because your plants pitcher well and pitchers are huge. Perhaps sunlight plays a big role in your growing area too as you've mentioned. It has to be or else your xcoccenia would not be so red and beautiful.

Hey, I just realised... is that normal garden soil that you use for your truncata or is it sphagnum peat moss and sand?

[funkychips]

admin said:

funkychips,

Love your xventrata and rafflesianas. How big are the rafflesianas? They look so huge. Your xventrata also has a very nice red/orange colour on its pitchers. Usually the redish colour fades away when we cultivate them in lowland conditions but yours seem more redish than mine. Well done man!

The first picture, is it xmiranda? Nicely taken care off.

Do you have alot of plants in your garden that makes the air around the plants more humid than the usual hot dry KL air? I'm asking because your plants pitcher well and pitchers are huge. Perhaps sunlight plays a big role in your growing area too as you've mentioned. It has to be or else your xcoccenia would not be so red and beautiful.

Hey, I just realised... is that normal garden soil that you use for your truncata or is it sphagnum peat moss and sand?

david, the rafflesianas are at 7 inches if I recall correctly the measurement but my plant never had upper pitchers .
yeah my x ventrata pitchers in flushes, but it seems strange that the mass pitchering comes only at this time of the year,annually that is, anytime out of this period there are no pitchers at all. Now it's no longer red overall, but halfway red like the colour of ventricosa.

I strongly believe it's the sunlight. I noticed a huge change in some Neps that used to grow well and those that don't. But most of the Neps now have ceased pitchering, or their pitchers have gone smaller. Example, my x miranda is now pitcherless, xcept for one pot There used to be a container pond with floating water plants in it,maybe that was the reason why the plants were kept cool and humid.

Before the renovation, my frontporch has 80% direct sunlight, so imagine the scorching heat coming down on all sides. As a result,the pitchers keep coming while the leaves are continuously burnt. The main vine of gracilis and coccinea also keep going higher and higher up it's like a Jack's beanstalk. Now, with 80% shade, I'm doomed to put up with less pitchers.

Yep, my truncata has the mix you mentioned. But now it has gone into garden soil plus a little more sand. I hope this mix is alright for truncatas as it has yet to show signs of disliking it.

Anyway just for reminiscence sake, here are my Neps flowering
my male x miranda in flower....two years ago...

my gracilis female flowers....

[funkychips]

My truncata has finally pitchered . So have the raffs. Now a year and half of reconditioning after my front yard renovation, they are starting to pitcher again.
It's not a big plant, about seven inches wide and four inches high, the pitcher about 6 1/2 inches.

hookeriana and raff (what type is it?)
I thought the garden would never come back as it was again, because it was initially so bad I didn't bet any chance that I'm ever going to come back to growing Neps. But now I think I'm back to Nep addiction

[tarence]

the raff looks like the johor variety...the colour tends to vary from light brown to intense brown depending on sunlite levels. i`m not sure about the hookeriana but i`ve seen it in nurseries & it`s on my wish list !

nice, good to know your plants are thriving once again.

[funkychips]

the hookeriana is a sensitive dude, always 'merajuk' by stopping its pitchering whenever it likes...probably TC clones from a plant tha doesn't like warm temps .

[David]

My hooker was growing really nicely with lots of picthers until begining of this year when I decided to make cuttings from the plants as basels shoots were apprearing. Cut the whole 3 main stem away. After that, it has merajuk until today. It has been about 8 months now and the basel shoots has only grew a few cm higher. No pitchers at all.

I totally agree with you. This is a sensitive dude.

[tarence]

mine isn`t a TC plant. it grows like a weed & is very vigorous. green pitchers with some batik design.

[funkychips]

But I have one pot with two main shoots with constant pitchers as small as 1.5 inch, and they stay at that size for 3 years straight, I never knew why Don't know where they came from, it was a gift from my neighbourhood fellow friend. I asked Fauzi and he suggested that it might have something to do with its genetics. The current one that I got from Sg Buloh and one from a vendor Pak Cik selling wild collected specimens are the ones which are sensitive.

[fauzi]

Hi All,

The first thing that we need to remember is that plants from TC were selected clone from hundreds or maybe thousand of them. When it comes to commercial purpose, the most attactive one will be selected as they will be produced in thousand. This is what I think Rainforestguy wanted to stress out. Almost all TC plants will look the same. No more variation.

I think as for your hookeriana, treasure and be proud of it as you may be having a different variety from others or maybe you are the only one that is having it in cultivation.

Fauzi

[rainforestguy]

The first thing that we need to remember is that plants from TC were selected clone from hundreds or maybe thousand of them. When it comes to commercial purpose,

This is a myth and what commercial growers do is that they want us to believe that occurs. This is simply not the case. If that were true, then all of our nepenthes species would be growing better than our seed grown hybrids.

The problems that exist with tc grown plants is that in the lab, they are proliferated to make cuttings, this is why so many tc plants have a palm-tree like groth habit. A tall stem with roots at the opposite end of a very long stem farthest away from their rosette or tips. Some plants never recover from the treatments encountered in vitro. There is one example in the Tropical Pitcher Plant Forum where BE's example of N. vieillardii is shown as a specimen cluster with other rare species. They claim it is also a tc clone, yet we all know it is from seed by the way it grows. Seed origin plants proliferate and develop as the main stem develops. Side pups are produced and the plants clump well. TC plants will always be leggy and somewhat weak in the root development area since it has evolved with nutrients being absorbed through their tissues.

M