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Browning S. leucophylla

I have a few small and a couple of medium sized S. leucophylla in a 6" pot that recently came out of dormancy. All of them are doing well except for one of the medium sized ones which started putting up pitchers, but stopped well before they were fully developed. The pitchers started shrivelling, then the visible part of the plant turned completely brown. I have since clipped all of the shrivelled pitchers. There appears to be a small pitcher forming (about 0.5" tall and completely red), but the tip appears to be turning black.

The pot is sitting in about 1.5" of RO water and gets about 8 hours of full sun. I repotted the plants into fresh soil (50/50 peat/perlite) and divided the rhizome in February, and have been spraying the plants with orthene every other week since they emerged from dormancy in early March. I would dig up the rhizome and check to see if it looks healthy, but I'd rather not disturb the other plants in the pot if I do not have to.

Any ideas on what the problem may be?
 
Why are you spraying with Orthene especially so often? Is there a specific infestation like mealy bugs? You probably burned the plant with the chemicals. The carriers (inactive ingredients) of many premixed insecticides can be harmful to most CPs. Powdered forms that you mix in water are recommended.
 
Yep I agree - too much medicine!
 
If it was all the plants turning brown I might say chemicals ( although I think orthene in moderation is excellant for bugs) but since it's only the one plant I would guess something's wrong with its root system. Just a guess. but I would say it lost some/most of its roots in the transplant, lost its leaves after early growth, and now has grown enough roots back to begin growing more leaves again. Tips seem to me to be the most delicate part of the plant and can turn black if the plant isn't in the best shape. So I would just leave it alone for now.
 
Thanks for the advice.

Some of the plants had aphid issues last season, so I sprayed Orthene as a preventative measure. I flushed the S.leucophylla pot this evening and will leave it alone for now. Hopefully, it'll be able to recover.
 
The brown Leucophylla doesn't seem to be recovering. Unfortunately, one of the other Leucophyllas in the same pot (a 1" tall one) seems to be suffering the same fate. Could it be something in the soil? I have two other plants in the pot that seem to be doing well, should I repot them as a precaution or is there some other measure I should be taking?
 
Is the perlite and peat fertilizer free? Check the bags. All I've been able to find in Home Depot and Lowes the past 2-3 months is the stuff with Miracle-Gro fertilizer in it. The huge bags or bales are all I can find free of fertilizer.

If with fertilizer, repot immediately into fertilizer free media. If worse comes to worse you can use pure LFS - they have it in the Lowes in Southern California but my friend in the Sacramento area hasn't been able to find any.

Are there signs of other pests like mealybugs? The Orthene should have taken care of them but if the roots are heavily infested sometimes there's not much that can be done.

Maybe dig up the first sick one and examine the roots carefully?
 
Is the perlite and peat fertilizer free? Check the bags. All I've been able to find in Home Depot and Lowes the past 2-3 months is the stuff with Miracle-Gro fertilizer in it. The huge bags or bales are all I can find free of fertilizer.

I'm pretty sure the potting media is fertilizer-free. The peat came from a bale of Sunshine brand sphagnum peat, the perlite is Uni-gro brand purchased from an independent nursery. All of my plants that use peat and perlite are using the same ingredients and are growing well. This includes venus flytraps, sarracenia, sundews, nepenthes, and butterworts.

Are there signs of other pests like mealybugs? The Orthene should have taken care of them but if the roots are heavily infested sometimes there's not much that can be done.

The only pests I can detect are fungus gnats (spider web like covering on the soil surface). I've heard that a heavy infestation of them can result in root damage.

Maybe dig up the first sick one and examine the roots carefully?

Thanks for the advice, I'll give it a try.
 
I took both of the dying plants out of the pot and took a look at their roots. Both of them had healthy-looking root systems (firm and white, with some older brown and black roots), so I gently removed as much of the soil as I could with my hands, planted each in its own 3" pot, and quarantined them to their own water tray. I'm hoping that they'll make a good quick recovery and that the remaining plants in the original pot will stay healthy and strong.
 
  • #10
You would have swarms of adult fungus gnats with a bad infestation.

What kind of shape were the rhizomes in? Were they still firm?
 
  • #11
I gave the rhizomes a little squeeze and they seemed about as firm as a grape. I posed the same questions to a vendor/grower that I highly respect and they suggested that it may be a fungal infection damaging the roots, and that I should uproot all of the plants in the pot, spray the roots with a sulfur-based fungicide (I used Lilly Miller's Polysul), and repot them in fresh soil, one plant to a pot. I did so, and noticed that all of the roots looked healthy, so I'm optimistic that at least some of them will survive.
 
  • #12
It sounds like mine here, but in my case i'm pretty sure it's from the hot spring we're having in Atlanta. Extreme watering with ice water has reconciled the issue here and I have some nice pitchers finally growing. Previously the tips turned brown.
 
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