You Grow Girl™

Tropical Pitcher (Nepenthes)

Thought I'd post a picture of the full tropical pitcher plant (Nepenthes) so you can see how large the actual plant is. It's a bad photo but you can see that it is huge and is actually tumbling out of its container. For such a large plant I paid a very decent price of only $25.00 CDN. It was originally $40.00 CDN the first time I went into the store, but I think they wanted to get rid of it and bring in new stock.

There are currently three pitchers on it; one that is almost dead, two that are still going strong and one tiny baby one up at the top of the plant. The tiny one is insanely adorable. I think there may not have been enough humidity and light in the florist which is why it stopped pitchering. I really hope I can get pitchers to form on the new leaves, but who knows... the move to a new location might be too much of a shock right now.

This morning I fed it a little bug I found. Who knows what it wsa or where it came from. Some kind of fly. Apparently with the Nepenthes you must not fake it and try to feed them dog food or ground beef or any of the stuff you hear about for other carnivorous plants. They must have insects. When I bought the plant there were some large flies in the two main pitchers so that should hold it for a while. Eventually I may have to get some crickets from the pet shop as it is a long way off until spring and summer yet. I grow brine shrimp for my fish, but buying crickets for my plant seems sort of surreal.

Any plant that eats insects seems to require a name. Send in your suggestions. If I pick yours I'll send you some You Grow Girl buttons, stickers and whatnot.