Arctic nepenthes

[swords]

My box of Neps arrived from Germany today, nothing looked frozen so my hopes are high.

All plants were labeled except the N. macrophylla, is there a customs reason not to ID this one? It also had no roots just a brown stem type thing (which roots could come from if there was any) I sliced the bottom 2-3 leaves off and cut at the the brown part til it was clean white/green. Otherwise I imagine that brown part would probably rot away and maybe infect the rest of the plant. This way it has a better chance-hopefully!

If this one is indeed N. macrophylla (at the size of a quarter I won't know if it is for quite some time) is there anything special that needs to be done for a tiny unrooted ones like this?

 

[GEORGE-CP]

sword, i recieved a plant like that but not from overseas and a diff plant. i did the same thing u did. cut the bottom 3-4 leaves off cause they where brown looking. and sliced into the stem. baby it for a while but, you might want to let them know it arrived w/ no root formasion just in case customs might have cut it off passing threw them. so far the plant looks ok from having it for about a week now. treat it like a cutting

 

[Tony Paroubek]

Customs does not trim plants if they find anything wrong. Perhaps something was broken during shipping/travel.

Treat it like a cutting and it has a good chance to root and survive.

And no there is no problem with labelling N. macrophylla. Most likely several arrived to the US distributor and were divided up and repacked for shipping within the US.
Tony

 

[GEORGE-CP]

Tony, would the distributor have anything to do w/ roots not being on the plant.

Sword, was there any thing in the bag that resembled a root.

 

[Tony Paroubek]

I can't speak for the company or the distributor.

I will say that any time a plant is handled the potential for damage increase. This does not mean that it will happen though. Only that it can happen.

The best thing for Swords to do would be to contact the person he bought the plant from and inform them of the condition upon arrival.

Tony

 

[swords]

Thanks guys!

OK, I have told the company about  the rootless plant and what I did.
Hopefully all will be well and the roots will form with no problem. If it grows just as easy as the rajah cuttings in proper conditions then I shouldn't have anything to worry about.

There was nothing in the bag that looked like roots seperated by rough treatment or anything, just the brownish stalk wrapped with LFS wrapped in papertowel.

Here's a question, will it help speed rooting if the plants substrate is left to be just moist instead of damp/wet (maybe water it only 1/2 as often as the others) and I simply mist the top? Seems like I remember someone at some point in my life saying that roots will grow faster with less water (perhaps I read this in a bonsai book). Any truth to that? I don't want to perform any true experimental experiments on a plant this "valuble" (to me anyway) at least until I have some cuttings of it to spare and experiment on.

 

[Spectabilis73]

I grow alot of succulants, and i usually don't give as much water as usual, and they always seem to root faster.(I think they do this faster cause they think it's coming up to a dry season so they'll make roots faster to get as much water as they can before the dry spell

)oh and I do this to ping cuttings too. (but since I'm still waiting for my first Nepenthes cutting to root and I'm not sure if this works on 'em you shouldn't do this.

just don't forget I didn't warn you!

)

 

[swords]

Wow, I got a fast reply from the dealer and he offered to send a new plant if the rootless N. macrophylla doesn't make it. He also offered to try and ID by digiphoto it since it was the plant that was in the box and not labeled and replace it if it didn't match his ID.