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Nepenthe Smilesii stem is getting brown from bottom

  • Thread starter GenSan
  • Start date
Hello Guys,

I'm totally novice to this, so I really need all the master Jedi advice I can get.

I have a Nepenthes Smilesii I bought last August, since then Its triple its size from when I bought it.

If you look at my smilesii from the top it looks healthy (sprouting new leaves, producing pitchers)

WP_20180121_17_14_36_Pro.jpg

However, if you look at it from the bottom, you can see the stem is getting brown, drying up leaves, and slowly creeping up my plants :)down:)

WP_20180121_17_11_32_Pro.jpg

The weird part of that is, it is growing a new little plant as you can see on the second image with small pitchers too.

Is my original smilesii dying? :-( What should I do?

Please help me masters, you're my only hope.

I grow my Nepenthes outdoor, under a banana tree, it gets 3-4 hours of direct sunlight a day.
I don't often water the pot (every 3 days or until the soil looks dry) but I spray the leaves every day.
 
No, what you're seeing is just natural aging. As a nepenthes grows taller and ages the stem will begin to turn brown and woody from the bottom up. So long as the browning doesn't spread dramatically faster than new growth is added on the top there is no cause for alarm. The small plant that it sprouted from the bottom is a basal and doesn't indicate poor health or stress. All neps will produce basals once they become large enough. This is just signaling that your plant is becoming larger and older.
 
[MENTION=12256]Grey Moss[/MENTION]

Thanks for the reply, Appreciate it. Should I cut the aging vines ? or let it be?
 
No reason to cut the vine unless you want to make cuttings. However, leaving the vines to grow has the benefit of letting the plant get large enough to make upper pitchers and flower eventually. If you're interested in seeing either of those I'd leave the vine to grow.
 
No reason to cut the vine unless you want to make cuttings. However, leaving the vines to grow has the benefit of letting the plant get large enough to make upper pitchers and flower eventually. If you're interested in seeing either of those I'd leave the vine to grow.


Thank you very much, Sir. That's really helpful.

Cheers! :beer:
 
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