Nepenthes:
I've been growing my plants under a 1000 watt metal halide light system
for the past 3 months. The first 8-inch (20 cm) pitcher - the biggest
Nepenthes pitcher I've seen in 'real life' - has been produced on a
N. x mixta 'superba' (or N. x 'superba') and has just opened a few days
ago. I've been watering from a 3-gallon bucket filled with rain water.
This bucket needs re-filling about twice a week. With every 2nd filling, I
add a 1/4 teaspoon of Miracle Grow (30-10-10 for 'acid-loving plants').
This is used to water nearly my whole CP collection. Every two weeks, a
few drops of Hormex liquid (similar to Superthrive) is added to the water
too. Humidity is not particularly high: 60% to 75%. It's interesting
to note that after the lights first turn on, the humidity steadily increases
for a few hours before dropping. I suppose this increase is from burning
off the 'dew' or the thin film of water that builds up on most surfaces
during the cooler dark period. The heat generated from these lights is
overstated and the temperature increase after the lights have been on for
several hours is only 10 to 15 degrees F.
Other things you can do on the 'internet':
>From the gopher at the Australian National Botanical Gardens, you can
see data from many herbarium specimens (where the specimen was collected,
what kind of soil was it growing in, etc). On this same gopher, you can
also see a list of species being grown at several of the Botanical Gardens
in Australia.
In-vitro Nepenthes culture:
When the plants are big enough to be removed from the flasks and put into
pots, how is the culture continued for another generation? Are some plants
taken from the sterile media and just chopped up and placed in fresh
media? Has anyone tried growing them similar to the way orchids are grown
from an apical meristem - in liquid nutrient solution under constant
agitation? In this method, as the first plantlet grows from the meristem,
the agitation breaks it into two or more pieces after which each part again
grows and breaks up. In a short time after enough plantlets are generated,
they are placed on solid agar media to develop normally.
-- Don Burden New Albany, Indiana, USA donb@coplex.com