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Photo of my plant
- Thread starter Tamlin Dawnstar
- Start date
Kate
Far too old to grow up now.
I have heard of Cephalotus with egg sized pitchers, and I sure would like to try that clone! As to what I am doing, I grow the plants with 80F days and 60F nights, 100% humidity with frequent spraying. On the hot days I try to water to cool the roots. Plants are watered once a week in winter and in summer sit in tray water. There is an inch of pearlit on the bottom of the pots for drainage. Mix is 50/50 peat pearlite with a little silica sand thrown in to the mix.
Cephalotus are slow growers at first. The trick is to feed every pitcher at least twice in its life. I use pill bugs.
I believe the plant needs to be somewhat pot bound for the larger pitchers to be produced. The plant in the photo is in a 4 inch pot. Larger pots encourage the plant to spread in area, but the resulting pitchers are smaller since the plant spends its energy in spreading.
I have a friend in Australia who has claimed to produce a mature flowering plant in one season from a cutting taken in spring with the use of a serpentine (mineral) based fertilizer. The logic is the serpentine fertilizer encourages the presence of a penicillin type fungi that forms mycrorhizal associations with the root hairs of the Ceph. His plant was in a mix composed of 60% pine sawdust. The high cellulose content tricked the plant into thinking that it needed to capture prey to compensate for the low nitrogen deficit, and the plant began pitchering like mad. The nitrogen it needed for pitcher growth was provided by the fungi. This person claims to have gotten 3 pitchers (3 inch sized) per week over the entire season! I have not experimented in this direction, but I find his concept of "nitrogen draw down" very promising.
Cephalotus are slow growers at first. The trick is to feed every pitcher at least twice in its life. I use pill bugs.
I believe the plant needs to be somewhat pot bound for the larger pitchers to be produced. The plant in the photo is in a 4 inch pot. Larger pots encourage the plant to spread in area, but the resulting pitchers are smaller since the plant spends its energy in spreading.
I have a friend in Australia who has claimed to produce a mature flowering plant in one season from a cutting taken in spring with the use of a serpentine (mineral) based fertilizer. The logic is the serpentine fertilizer encourages the presence of a penicillin type fungi that forms mycrorhizal associations with the root hairs of the Ceph. His plant was in a mix composed of 60% pine sawdust. The high cellulose content tricked the plant into thinking that it needed to capture prey to compensate for the low nitrogen deficit, and the plant began pitchering like mad. The nitrogen it needed for pitcher growth was provided by the fungi. This person claims to have gotten 3 pitchers (3 inch sized) per week over the entire season! I have not experimented in this direction, but I find his concept of "nitrogen draw down" very promising.
