That's a bud. It would probably be best to cut right below the
leaf attachment so the leaf is weakly held in place and put it off
the stem, you'll get more node and where the leaf was pulled off
should allow a larger area for roots to grow.
> It's in a free draining hanging basket,
> still in the same terrarium. It gets regular watering and misting in a
> constant high humidity environment. This was about 3 weeks ago.
> The origional plant hasn't slowed at all, it is growing from a fork in the
> stem right at the soil level and is firing out pitchers the size of large
> bananas. The cutting slowly began to troop, the leaves folding downwards
> and looking unhappy, but still green. Now the lowest of the leaves is
> actually dieing, and the rest of the cutting seems a bit worse off day bay
> day. I've seen no new growth at all.
You won't until it roots. It sounds like your humidity isn't high
enough. When I take cuttings that are **not** going into 100% humidity
(like rooting the next to the mother plant) I lay the leaves along the
ground as if doing a Drosera leave cutting, place them in a shadier
spot, and keep the pitchers half full of water. I know everyone cuts
off the pitchers along w/ half the leaf but this makes no sense to me.
You can easily keep the cutting hydrated by adding water to the pitch-
ers, by leaving the leaves intact you get a much great area for photo-
synthesis and (this part is my guess) the pitchers which have the true
leaves on them are a good source for the plants own natural rooting
hormones. This seems true as I have never had a cutting died on me
done this way, while several other done in the traditional way did.
I would bag that cutting of your's and move it to shadier spot.
maybe even recut three leaves down from top, try and root both sections.
A five leave cutting *is* pretty big.
Dave Evans