Nepenthes seedlings

[Johanovich]

So I purchased some Nepenthes seeds to try growing Neps from seed and decided it would be a nice experiment to compare two of the growing guides listed on this forum.

I purchased N. attenboroughii, N. naga and N. maxima "wavy leaf". All of them were collected in the wild and (according to the vendor) every batch came from a single plant.
I tried the method of just sowing the seeds and putting them under strong lights, and the method of covering them completely for 10 days and then putting them in less strong light.
I divided the seeds randomly over two pots, with every pot containing half of the seeds from 1 species (not very good statistically I know but I don't want to spend a lot of money on 30 repeats).

this is how they looked after being sown on 19/06/2013 (I only photographed one pot for every species)
Nepenthes naga


Nepenthes maxima "wavy leaf"


Nepenthes attenboroughii


First germination was in the N. attenboroughii pot under the strong lights on 16/07/2013, followed by germination of N. attenboroughii in the other treatment on 18/07/2013.



By now most of the attenboroughii seeds have germinated but none of the other seeds have shown any sign of germination. Do these species require other specific conditions than the attenboroughii?






In any case, for the attenboroughii the treatment does not seem to matter as 3 days difference is very small (and probably more due to me not seeing the germination).

 

[Whimgrinder]

I think you will find that a significant proportion of seeds sold by "certain known vendors" do not germinate, for whatever reason(s). You can also expect there will occasionally be mislabeled/misidentified seeds as well. The copious "N. reinwardtiana" seedlings I got as a result of buying these seeds (probably the same merchant as yours) have turned out to be something akin to N. maxima or perhaps copelandii, but are certainly not reinwardtiana. Growing Nepenthes from wild collected seed is a gamble, as we all know.

 

[Johanovich]

A small update:
I chucked the naga and maxima seeds out as is was clear that they were not going to germinate and mold was starting to cover them.
12 out of 20 attenboroughii seeds germinated. I lost one attenboroughii seedling that failed to open its leaves, but the other 11 are doing great.
They slowed down a bit during the hotter part of sumer but it seems they are now back on track.
It seems that some of the seedlings are redder than the others, but its still too early to tell.


One of the more red ones

A pure green one

The first true leaf and proto-picther are forming