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RamPuppy

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Well, I have had a ceph for almost a year now, for the last few months it has been in my terrarium, but it's not huge, it's been growing the same size pitchers since I got it... and I am starting to wonder if I just don't have good conditions for it...

Any how, I was wondering if anyone with ALOT of ceph experience would mind giving us the rundown on this plants sluggish crawl to maturity. My traps are about 1.2 centimeters in heigth, the plant has 4 rosettes, which I guess I could probably divide... but I am scared to...

I would like to know how long it is going to take this plant to become a bruser!

OH, and the light it gets is the same as my nepenthes get, they seem happy... it's in a high humidity tank, and it's planted in peat, orchid bark mix, perlite, and long fiber sphagnum, at about five inches in depth...

When I got it, the root structure was almost non-existent, do you think maybe it has been putting all it's energy int building nice roots? I still don't think the roots are all that hot, and it was my understanding they sent out deep tap roots... I had to move it a month ago, and the soil clup I grabbed held all the roots, and that was smaller than a tennis ball... to be fair, the plant could be wadded up tenderly and occupy the same space as a golf ball in size...

THe plant is green, I guess it could use more light, but that is not gonna happen, I have all the light in that terrarium that I can get...

What are it's temps like in nature? I have been thinking about using this mild winter to harden it off in my enclosed patio (humidity around 60% never drops below 60, and then trying to grow it in a relatively shaded area outdoors this summer, where the temp can get up to 102 in the afternoon (Not in shade)...

ANy thoughts? If I do try it outdoors, I will be buying more plants from Phil and Jaie when they become available, just so I don't lose it all...
 
RAM,
Cephalotus is a very slow grower. I have some plants I grew from seed 15 years ago and the pitchers are still less than 2 cm high! From cuttings it is much quicker, getting to maturity in about three years. They can take a year or two to recover from repotting so don't repotting very often. Give them a very deep pot which they will appreciate. They never have much root apart from the thick central root, and never seen to produce many fine roots at all.
 
GOE, Thanks,

I knew they were slow growers, but I had no idea they were THAT slow! Dang! OK...

So mine has high humidity, a 55 gallon tank with soil five inches deep to grow in, and is getting a good amoung ot light, it actually get's some real light in the corner it is in... so, I guess it is actually doing pretty good then...

Let me give you some specs...

The plant, including it's all of it's pitchers and multiple crowns is about 2 inches long, and an inch and a half wide, making it a roughly 2 inch long ovioid cluster of pitchers and leaves, actually almost completley pitchers...

Again, the pitchers are about a centimeter and a half tall, but a little less in diameter than say, an old wood style number two pencil.

how long do you think it will be before it increases substantially in size? I know it could be recieving more light, as it has zero red in it... would re-angleing the tank to give it more direct sunlight be that much more beneficial you think?

I have kinda ignored this plant in favor of the nepenthes, and I am 'digging' it again, and want it to do well.

I hope that someday I will have a huge one, either through growing this one up, or buying a more mature specimen than the one I have...
 
Hi Ram

It's nice to be giving back some info for a change!

My grandparents live in Albany (common name for these things is the Albany pitcher plant) and I've seen a few in the wild.

If and when you repot your plant, go for a more sandy mix and skip the orchid bark. Maybe a 50/50 peat and sand mix will do fine.
Re temps:
The Perongerups are a set of tiny little hills that we call mountains cause we don't really have any (they are only a few hundred metres high). They are just a little ways out the back of Albany, and it sometimes snows for a VERY brief period on the tops. It gets pretty cool down Albany way in mid winter so 60F won't worry them too much, in fact they'll probably like it. Likewise in summer there are few days where it falls below 30C (sorry, don't know what that is in F) but they can take that too.

Cheers, fatboy.
 
according to http://www.futuresource.com/weather/cfcalc.asp

30 degrees celcius is 86 degrees farenheit..

using that calculator, i figure the plant must be able to withstand 38.8 degree celcius summers... can it?

Thanks by the way!
smile.gif
 
38.8 degrees celcius! Whoa thats quite hot....ram i hope u know that cephs absolutly detest heat and it will kill them,personly i wouldn't let your ceph get too hot. In the wild these plants grow in extremly dense shrub,and i have read about peoples feild trips to ceph habitat and they say that it is impossible to even see the cephs through the undergrowth so i wouldn't suggest too much light or heat. They also said the cephs they found tend to have more leaves on them than pitchers so if it's not pitchering like mad i don't think u should worry. Um but almost about everywhere i have read about these plants says they hate heat so i thought u might just like to be aware of that. Oh and did u know that they grow larger pitchers with the less light they receive?
 
yeah, I knew about larger pitchers with less light, I also knew about the heat, but I could never find any written info on what that threshold is... So, I will not put them outside... I'll keepem indoors...

I know they can take more light than I am currently providing, so I think perhaps in the future, sometime between now and the green house, I will build a REAL terrarium... Outfit it with not only flourescent, and metal halide... yup... I think that is what I will do...
smile.gif
 
LOL i could never imagine growing plants under artifical light,it still hasn't really sunk in with me that you can grow plants under lights,maybe the problem is the light? Maybe you should give it sunlight and not artifical light?
 
Ram I agree with what Mondo says.
They get 30C in Albany and I am confident that they can hack that. I've grown them in plenty of Perth summers where we got up to 48C!! Obviously they were kept in the coolest place I coud find and DEFINITELY not in the sun!!
I would guess that about 30C to 32C is the limit of their comfort level and a few degrees less than that  is ideal.

Cheers, fatboy.
 
  • #10
well, your right, sunlight is always ideal...

My worry has been the small size of this plant, and the fact that my apartments deck get's western exposure, and the evening sun here is brutal. But if you have taken your outside (In the shade obviously) all the way up to 48 degrees celisius, then, that fills me with confidence, and I will try.

I'll get a nice shady spot for it outside, and start hardening it off. Or perhaps I'll order a new one this spring and do it that way... This is my first ceph, and while he may not be the happiest where he is, he is growing, slowly.... so I would rather hold on to him than lose him totally... I'll have to put some thought into that...

Oh, and don't knock growing under artificial light! A lot of people that see my terrarium want it... the think it's pretty cool. THere is a low quality shot of my Ven X Max in the user gallery.... take a look, it's in my terrarium, growing like a weed!
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Laters guys!
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  • #11
Proper artificial lights are in my opinion BETTER than sunlight. 365 days of light at the correct intensity and day length! Most major greenhouse growers have artificial lighting.

If I recall your using 4 fluorescent tubes Ram?? Unfortunately with normal fluorescent tubes you can never get the intensity to mimic the sun. Intensity is what you need to produce rich red color in traps. Maybe if the plant was a few inches from the tubes that would do the trick....
Tony
 
  • #12
I grow my Cephs 6" from a 4 bulb shop light with an aluminum foil skirt around it. They are out in my garage in near ambient temps (high 30s to mid 50s F) and humidity (60-90%) and are growing well even in the cool temps, each new pitcher picking up 1 or 2 mm on the previous one, and are coloring up very nicely. I match the light cycle to the local daylight times and I am going to use a small "personal" swamp cooler to keep the temp. down and humidity up this summer. I have seen a lot of people have this plant die back or just plain die after being exposed to temps above 95-100. They are really fun, if slow, plants. Good luck.
 
  • #13
I can't get the ceph any closer to the lights simply because of the construction of the terrarium... Oh well...

Perhaps I will look into building up a corner with some wood, and planting the ceph higher up in the tank... that might be of real benefit... and hiding the stand and making it look natural wouldn't be all that hard...

But it is a project for the future!
 
  • #14
Why not just grow it under a shade cloth outside?
LOL plants are not supposed to get 365 days of correct proportions of light,if they were then i am sure the weather circumstances would be quite different,but if thats the way you do it fine by me but i wouldn't go as far as saying artifical light is better than the sun because we don't really know what is going on in plants,for all we know artifical light might not meet all their needs,but never the less i couldn't be bothered with a debate.
 
  • #15
What's wrong with 365 days of light at the ideal intensity for growth? Because a plant in the wild has sunny days and cloudy days should we give those plants in our care occasional days of less than ideal light? WHy? So they can grow at a less than ideal rate?

hmm well actually yes we do know exactly what is going on inside a plant. We know exactly what wavelength of light activate which various chlorophylls and other light activated pigments. We know how photoperiods affect flowering cycles and can be manipulated down the the day with commercial plants such as pointsettia etc.
Artificial lights can be designed to include more light in the proper wave length than even the sun has and less of the harmful infrared light that can burn plants. More energized chlorophyll = faster growth.

If you don't want a debate fine.... but I do hope you think about some of the questions I raised.
Tony
 
  • #16
Hey Tony,

I was unaware of any over the counter light sources that could rival the sun in intensity (Percieved here on earth I mean of course)

Last I heard NASA was the only group that had generated such light sources, they are wavelength specific LED's designed to generate the exact wavelength to grow plant A or plant B in a hydroponics bay on the way to Mars. These light sources are not commercially available as of yet.

Am I wrong? Is there something better out there?

BTW,

Who can answer me this... what is the most efficient light producing 'thing' on the planet. I will give you some hints...

It is alive, it puts out light, but nearly zero heat waste (like all man made lights do).
 
  • #17
the most effekive lights avaible are "low-pressure-natrium-lights", which produce 183 lumen / watt.
But the spectrum is very narrow and in the photosyntetic ineffektive range.
Second effektive lights are HIGH-pressure natrium lights, which produce up to 135 lumen / watt.
The spectrum is very good for plants !
The drawbacks are the prize and that the light is yellow.

I use one 70W light for an 120cm x 60cm terrarium (there is also some light from an east facing window) and the results are VERY good.
Heliamphora pitchers direct under the bulb turn reddish and form "big" and deep red lids, which is the best sign for enough light. The Nepenthes are growing on the ssides where the intensity is lower.

There is a German articel about the best lights for carnivorous plants :
http://www.carnivoren.org/de....ck.html
 
  • #18
Martin, can you use lights like Actinics and normal lights in conjunction with this to normalize the appearance? Or is the 'yellow' light just to intense to overcome?

Also, I have heard that these lights are incredibly expensive to run...
 
  • #19
A few years ago I had a 2.5m aquarium that I set up in the living room of the little apartment I was living in at the time. I FILLED it with plants and tried to make it look like an Amazon river scene. I suspended three sodium vapour lamps from the ceiling above it.
The plants went off big time. The tank was fantastic -  so green and lush looking. My Neon Tetra's spawned continuously.
Those lamps produced some serious heat, I didn't need to use a heater as the lamps did the job as well as lighting the tank.
I didn't think  they were too yellow, but I had the water going through peat which added a slightly yellowish tinge anyway so I wouldn't have noticed.
Also, as you pointed out Ram, they almost doubled my electric bill. I think that they are what people use when they grow "crops" hydroponically inside where they don't want people to see them, not that I have ever done that
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cheers, fatboy.
 
  • #20
Sunlight is roughly 10,000 lumens / meter squared. (or roughly a 3' x 3' area). A 175watt metal halide bulb puts out roughly 10-12,000 lumens SOOO to equal sunlights intensity if all the light that bulb puts out lands on a block 1 meter x 1 meter. In actual practice though light is lost to the sides and reflectors over the bulb are not 100% perfect. You can see though with readily available 400 and 1000 watt bulbs out there, how easy it would be to through huge amounts of light onto a small area of space.. more than full noon sun can provide. Of course the challenge of keeping the plants from being fried alive exists. But I am only theorizing here based on technical data.. NO one in their right mind would take a 1000 watt high pressure bulb and use it to illuminate a 9square foot area.

As for High pressure sodium and Metal halide... If your using a single bulb and the plants do not get much supplimental sunlight. Metal Halide provides the closer match to Sunlight spectrum and better growth. This does not mean that High Pressure Sodium produces bad growth. High pressure sodium however is used more often because it is cheaper on the electric bill, and the bulbs last twice as long as the Metal Halide, while still giving very satisfactory results.

The basic difference is that the Metal Halide with more blue in it's spectrum will give shorter stocky growth and better leaf growth. While a High Pressure Sodium with more red light spectrum produces better blooming and enhances elongation of stems. Most of the Hydroponic companies these days will sell HPS if your supplimenting a Greenhouse and a dual fixture for indoor growing comprised of one metal halide and one HPS bulb.

I would imagine that you could use an actinic to very effectively balance a HPS bulb or other similarly yellow/red bulb.
Tony
 
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