NEPENTHES GROWING GUIDE

Match your climate

Lowland plants want typical tropical conditions of hot days and hot nights, intermediate plants want warm days and cooler nights, and highland plants want warm days and much cooler nights. All Nepenthes like humidity, but lowland plants are generally more sensitive to lower humidity. If you’re a beginner in Tasmania don’t buy lowland species wanting 30 plus degree days and high humidity. Likewise, beginner buyers in Queensland and Northern Territory shouldn’t be buying pure highland species wanting night time temperature drops that don’t occur naturally. Certain species will always break the rules, and some species have incredible natural ranges that span lowland to highland, but starting with suited plants will make life much easier. For a well rounded online guide to what climates species come from I am constantly using the Nepenthes guide made by tomscarnivores.com

Most hybrids are easier than most species

Nepenthes for sale will either be pure species or hybrids. Hybrids can vary from simple, where there are two species parents, to complex, where there can be as multiple species contributing to the hybrid. Quite a few simple hybrids are naturally occurring hybrids and some even have names that at first may make them appear as species, such as N. x ventrata. The lower case ‘x’ here indicates that it’s the name of a hybrid, but often the x will be left out. In this case, ventrata is actually N. alata x ventricosa. I’ll always try to have these presented as the Nepenthes a x b (‘common name’). Hybrids are almost always thought of being easier to have success with as a grower due to their ‘hybrid vigour’, though there are some very robust species that can give hybrids a run for their money.

Different propagation methods

Commercial Nepenthes come from Tissue Culture (often abbreviated as TC), cuttings, or seeds. Tissue culture and cuttings both produce clones of a plant. Some tissue culture lines will represent a single clone (so there are thousands of that plant around the world) while some might represent several lines of clones across a large seed batch (up to hundreds of clones of hundreds of varieties). Clones are nice, as you can see in the example picture exactly what you should end up with. However, new and exciting variation is always coming from producing new plants from seed. Generally for seed grown plants and batch based tissue culture plants pictures of the parents will be provided so the genetics can be seen. Its not for years however that this particular ‘grex’ (hybrid made by those specific parents) will show its full traits.

Nepenthes Sizing Guide:

The two standard ways to size Nepenthes for sale are to provide the measurement of the tip-to-tip ‘leafspan’ of the two longest leaves, or provide the pot size and photo of the plant for visual aid. Given that plants are constantly growing and even tissue culture clones will vary when grown out for the same amount of time, measurements are best given in ranges and here at Old World Botanicals we will use the following sizes:

Small (S): plants with a maximum leaf-span up to 9 cm

Medium (M): plants with a maximum leaf-span of 10-19 cm

Large (L): plants with a maximum leaf-span 20-30 cm

Extra Large (XL): anything above 30 cm in leaf-span

These sizes are relative to sale plants and, for example, nepenthes vines can easily reach several meters length if allowed to grow (see Nepenthes Growing Guide). Here at OWB, we’ll endeavour to provide an accurate size and photo of the plant where possible. For species / hybrids with larger numbers of stock, we’ll provide some photo examples of typical plants from the line and then only list plants for sale that meet the minimum size provided.