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Truncata: highland v lowland

  • #41
Trent,

I'll try to take some better photos on my next visit to the highlands later this week. The later pitchers have colored up a lot more, the body of the pitcher looks as though it is going to be dark. It's still a young plant though.

Can't download the photo of the N. cantleyi tonight, bandwidth restricted since I'm trying to download a 36MB update for my Ipod which is going to take 2 hours or so! Looking forward to seeing the pic though!
 
  • #42
Hi all:

According to their growing conditions,I do believe that most phillilppino species fall into a special category. we just can't label them as highlands and lowlands based on where they are found. many of these, love warmer temperatures when they are labelled highlands (ventricosa) and others do well in cold weather when they are labelled lowlands (truncata).
Only by understanding the temperature and humidity patterns in the phillippines, we'd have a better idea on how to grow the species from this part of the world.

How about strict intermediates!.

Gus
 
  • #43
It's an appealing proposition, I always thought Philippino highland species were more heat tolerant than other species, mostly based on stuff I'd seen on other websites. However, having paid close attention to the pitchering habits of various species over several summers, I don't think Philippines species are that different. Nearly all my ventricosa varieties refuse to pitcher in the heat of summer, and lowland species such as merrilliana and bellii are extremely intolerant of the cold. Truncata seems to be a bit of a one off. Its new growth and pitchers more than halve their size if kept cool to cold over winter (how much the photoperiod is involved I'm not sure).

However, my most persistent pitcherers during hot weather amongst the highland species are a group from Sumatra, and a few from Sulawesi (maxima, eymae, tentaculata).

Anyway, I suspect different people get different behaviour from different species depending on different growing conditions....
 
  • #44
Of course SydneyNeps, everyone has slightly different growing conditions,which in turn will give a slightly different result. i'd still want to know what hot means: 30C 35C, 40C. or 80F, 95F, or 110F.
For some reason phillippino species don't follow a specific growth pattern based on natural location, at least, in my judgement.

Gus
 
  • #45
In my experience and in my conditions, species like ventricosa (Philippines),  Sanguinea (Malaysia), as well as veitchii (Borneo) and alata from high altitudes (Philippines) stop pitchering when night minima are above about 19C. Day temperature maxima don't seem to have a huge amount of influence, they seem to pitcher with very hot days provided the nights get cool enough. This is consistent over the last 7 years I've been growing these species under their current conditions.

All this, and all other evidence around, is anecdotal. Someone would need to do extensive control studies to see what the results are like. I'd love to know what other factors change the equation - does higher humidity make highland species pitcher with higher night minima, or does it make no difference? Do lowland species cope with lower temps is humidity is lower? This sort of factor could be one reason why results vary from grower to grower.

As I said before, the view that Philippino species are more tolerant of different temperature ranges than species from other locales arose probably from comments made by Joel on his Nepenthes Around the House site, and also by the fact that the most ubiquitous species and one of the easiest to grow species - ventricosa (and you could probably include truncata) - is from the Philippines.  Is this empirical? Well, it would basically have to be shown that most Philippines species follow this trend, and species from other regions don't. I admit that ventricosa are truncata are hardy, tolerant, and easy to grow. But so are sanguinea, maxima, tentaculata, bongso and others not found in the Philippines (and I've found the latter 3 more tolerant of warm nights than sanguinea and ventricosa; veitchii and alata appear to vary depending on source altitude). Conversely, merrilliana, bellii, argentii and to a certain extent sibuyanensis can be quite temperamental and unforgiving.

Other interesting points to look at would be the exact altitude various species are found (and unfortunately some of this data is conflicting and suspect), and whether species with a broad altitudinal range are more tolerant of, for example temperature fluctuations, than those from a more limited altitudinal range. Distance from the equator might also be considered.

What have other growers found? I want someone to post who has completely contradictory experiences!
smile_n_32.gif
 
  • #46
Well, to be honest with you all, i have been experiementing with humidity, i should say humidities as low as 11-25% during the day and 80%+ at night with typical highland temperatures at also at nighttime and they seem to have an effect on pitcher production. Not just on the phillippino species but others as well.
Only species such as veitchii which are naturally adapted to thrive under low humidity conditions pitcher well.
 
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