Hello, about 10 months ago I received a Nepenthes Glandulifera × Talangensis. I set it on a west facing windowsill with a few hours of direct sunlight. Temps are around 80F to 85F (90+ on hot days) with night Temps being 60F to 75F. Humidity is around 50 percent during the day and 70 to 80 percent at night. It's been doing fine the last couple of months until March came along. During March I noticed one of it's leaves had a yellow spot. I didn't think to much of it as I thought it was sun damage. Eventually the spot developed a black center which spread across the leaf and killed it off. This was odd because it wasn't an old leaf. The next thing I know is that most of the plants leaves developed the same yellow spot and turned the leaves black so I cut most of them off fearing it would spread to the stem of the plant. After that I thought it was the end of it, I gave it some osmocote to give it a boost ( which was a bad idea and burned most of the leaf that retrieved the pellet) and then flushed the pot and set it aside. But I was wrong, it seems that it's happening again and I'm not sure what it is and what's causing it. I've asked many other forums and sub reddits and no one really knows what's the problem. Me and a few others think its caused by low humidity (I just bought a humidifier so hopefully that helps). Any thoughts on what this could be and how to fix it?
Nepenthes is sick and possibly dying.
Sorry for some reason they aren't in order. The first photo with 3 leaves is the most recent one(the leaf in the back is the leaf that got burned by osmocote). The second and last photos are taken on the same day and are the oldest photos, and the third and fourth photos are taken a month after the previous two. Sorry if that's confusing.
You need to drop the night temperatures more; that's a very strictly highland hybrid, needs nights in the 50's. And west-facing windowsills are as a general rule, not suitable for growing plants on, because they get the hottest sun of the day possible and only briefly, so your plant may well be experiencing far hotter daytime temperatures than said there and is not happy about it.
Thanks for the tips, I'll try to move it to a better spot and see if that works
How often do you mist the plant? I would mist it regularly and make sure to move it to a cooler spot. A nice highland plant like that likes cooler days and nights. The humidifier is great, but would also benefit from regular misting as well to simulate good rain storms for it as neps really like to have their leaves wet . I mist all my neps a good few times a day to really keep up the humidity for them.
For now I would just mist it with just pure distilled water and lay off any foliar feeding until it shows really good signs of recovery.
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Unless it's setting up a timed regular application system, misting is not beneficial. What would be done by hand is too infrequent to do anything other than cause sudden drastic shifts in local temperature and humidity which causes further stress for a plant, not assistance. More beneficial and effective if an automated system is not possible is an evaporative feature such as a pebble tray (which also will not leave water sitting on the leaves which can invite fungal or bacterial infection).
Not saying misting is beneficial but is there any proof it can stress a plant ? Rain is natural and long as the water is close to room temperature how would it stress a plant ?
Does rain occur in their natural habitats in average household humidity levels? Or in most Nepenthes habitats does humidity ever commonly drop that low immediately after it rains? There's a reason that evaporative coolers are so useful in greenhouses as well, because water exposed to moving air (even slight currents) and especially air with a much lower vapor pressure can drop the air and/or more significantly the surface it's evaporating off of up to 20 degrees F or more in short order. Slow evaporation is one thing (hence pebble tray, where there's a constant source that both maintains humidity levels and slows the rate of loss from that source once it reaches an equilibrium), but rapid evaporation from misting a plant in a much lower humidity environment is another.
And everything that a plant experiences produces a stress, the issue is if extra stresses are added on to the point that it may weaken the plant and this is very easy in a household environment where multiple factors are not at the plant's perfect preferred levels.
I'm finding it difficult to find any further information on misting nepenthes in less than ideal conditions actually weakening plants or stressing them , could you point me towards further reading on the subject? Many think it's a waste of time and that I can understand but I can't find much or anything about it stressing plants and causing harm to them, maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, I'd of thought more people would of noticed misting had adverse effects as so many seem to mist their plants ,
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I just took some fersh pics of all my plants to show how well misting them works and benefits them very well, and yes, I give them both max sea and superthrive in the 2 gallon sprayer bottle. It's one of those ACE Hardware sprayers.
