> Can someone tell me if a night temperature
> of about 57F is too low for Nepenthes
> gracilis seedlings that are about 7 months
> old.
I don't really know about N. gracilis. I have a pot of
seedlings of N. madagascariensis which I am hoping to wean
from the propagator some day - they are nearly two years
old, and the largest now has a rosette 7cm from leaf-tip to
leaf-tip. When initially transplanted, I used a mixture with
quite a lot of peat - I felt that the little plants needed
something to anchor in. They clearly hated this and made very
little progress. Eventually I dug them up again, and found
very little root. I washed off what soil was attached, and this
time used bark with sand, grit, and perlite - things are now
looking much better, and now they have roots I suppose I have
more chance of removing them from the propagator environment
(they always wilted immediately before).
My only decent sized Nepenthes (N. alata) continues to astonish
me. This is its first Winter and I wondered if Winter would be
a problem, since I don't have any fancy growing conditions.
The plant is just hung up in an ordinary room in the house in
temperatures varying between perhaps 12 and 20C (warmer at
night when the heating is on), and continues to grow almost as
fast as in Summer, though it is producing few pitchers, and
these are very small (it produced nice pitchers in Summer).
I'm pleased to say that two of the N. (anonymous) cuttings sent
by Andreas Wistuba have now rooted - one or two have rotted,
and I'm still hoping with the others. This is my first
experience of rooting these, so I'm quite pleased so far.
-- Clarke Brunt (clarke@brunt.demon.co.uk)