Cephalotus die-off.

Bob Beer (bbeer@u.washington.edu)
Mon, 27 Sep 1993 09:59:37 -0700 (PDT)

I had read that Cephalotus will occasionally die back to the roots.
Well, I just had my first experience with this. It was doing wonderfully,
I had it 2 years and this year it had produced several very large traps
and was growing great guns. One day I noticed that the lids were "down"
over several of the pitchers, and within a week, the entire plant was
dried and brown.

Does anyone know why this happens? What is the best treatment of a plant
that has done this? Right now I am just keeping it moist and in the East
window that it has been in forever.

One thing I did do is treat *other* plants with Coles systemic against
mealy bugs (I also grow lots of Asclepiads), and that first night the
fumes were kind of strong though I tried to ventilate well. This is the
granular form that you water into the soil. Is it possible that this was
the cause? The die back occurred about a week and a half after I did
this treatment. Ideas?

Bob