n. ramispina

[mijako10]

First off, today I went to a orchid nursery calledOrchids Limited. It's a greenhouse west of Minneapolis (in Minnesota

) that carries some absolutely stunning orchids and some equally impressive nepenthes. They had some HUGE truncatas and ventricosa's and some good sized bicals.

Anyway, I got a beautiful little nep called nepenthes ramispina. I talked to the manager at the store and I told him I needed a smallish plant since I have limited space in my mini-greenhouse. He showed me a table of ramispinas and I picked one out.

The thing is, I have limited knowledge of this plant and the page on the Orchids Limited site isn't a lot of help. Can someone with experience give me a few pointers? ^_^

 

[colinliew]

That's a gorgeous-looking plant. I hope the Nepenthes I bought from Malaysia turns out to be a ramispina too.

 

[swords]

Hi Micah, I live about 30 mins from Orchids Ltd. I love that place compared to all other local greenhouses. Did you talk to the owner Jerry (the silver haired chap)? If you ask to see something and it's not in the main room and he's not busy he'll take you on a tour of his whole facilities. There's a lot of really nice stuff not out in the retail room.

Anyway, N. ramispina likes cool temps (especially at night), bright lighting and contrary to Jerrys experience with his N. ramispinas (which just arrived last summer/fall), I do not fertilize mine at all. I did at first when i got mine back in oct 2002 and it started making smaller pitchers until it didn't make any. I quit fertilizing it and flushed the soil a number of times and it has started pitchering again. Now I only feed it insects and the pitchers increase with each new leaf. So long as you have good highland conditions (cool, bright and humid) you should do well with this species. I doubt it will do well outside true highland temperatures.
Here's a recent shot of one of my pitchers (12 cm high pitcher on a 36 cm plant):

and here's a link to my N. ramispina page on my site:
Jurassic Gardens N. ramispina entry

Good luck with this neat species!

 

[mijako10]

Thanks! Orchi'ds Limited is such a nice place. And the manager was really friendly. I can't wait to go back.

 

[kltower]

Hi,

Here is a picture of one of two opened N. ramispina pitchers. Both are about 12/13 cm long. Another, about 8cm is about to open. The plant is from Cameron Highlands. Generally, I find that plants from Cameron Highlands have lighter or greenish pitchers, while those from Genting Highlands have darker pitchers.

Choong

 

[swords]

Wow, that's neat! Almost like a N. fusca x ramispina with that coloration and speckling! Thanks for showing!

 

[Guest]

maybe it is fusca x rampsina, with the high pitcher neck and all ?

 

[swords]

N. fusca doesn't grow near N. ramispina in the wild (fusca=borneo, ramispina =peninsular malaysia) and I don't know if anyones made that particular hybrid yet. It just has that "fusca feel" with those green pitchers, very nice!