You Grow Girl™

Tropical Pitcher (Nepenthes)

Well I did it! I bought the tropical pitcher plant (Nepenthes) I've been coveting. I was walking back from a visit to a local printer and decided to pop into my new favourite florist "Poppies" to see what they had and to sneak another peek at the pitcher plant. Poppies (located at Queen and Dovercourt) is an awesome store by-the-way with lots of less-then-typical arrangements, plants, and containers for sale. I've been in the store twice before and both times I have left dreaming about that plant. But since I've been working so hard at NOT buying plants on impulse I had been forcing myself to think it through before making the purchase. I did a bit of reading and got some advice on the forums and thought about whether I could handle the task responsibly... and look at me not being completely impulsive about it. But I have to admit I'm still a little bit freaked.

Needless to say, I'll be committing this care manual to memory. I've already read through it more than once and I have to admit I'm a bit scared but I don't see it being much more difficult than my orchids (minus the Vanda). My greatest fear right now is that it will hate adjusting to this new environment -- the care manual says they take at least 6 months to adjust. The good news is that it didn't just come from a perfect greenhouse environment as far as humidity and temperature goes so at least it isn't going from perfect to less than perfect. I talked about it alot with the woman in the store and she said this one had been doing well in the store despite the lack of perfection. In fact it has a new trap forming so something must be going right. I have also noticed new foliage developing with the little dangly bits at the ends (must learn anatomy of this plant) that the pitchers are formed from, which means there is a good chance that more new pitchers will develop shortly. There are a few brown spots on the leaves, but the florist admitted that it might be due to the use of inappropriate water because she had since learned that they prefer filtered water... something I had learned from the orchids and had put into practice with all my epiphytic plants since the summer.

It's so amazing I can't stop looking at it. What an insane plant. I've thoroughly inspected it, looked inside the pitchers... it's a marvel. Inside the pitchers are some little bugs and you can even see them as dark spots through the walls of the pitchers. There is no liquid inside the pitchers as I have read, but there are little spots that look like they might be sticky that the insects get stuck on. The plant is a trailer and since mine is rather large it is a bit unbalanced in it's current container. It's in a small hanging basket and the plant is almost toppling out with the pitchers hanging down below the foliage. I might need to fix that soon.

Click here to see a bigger picture of the plant.