My Nepenthes Singapore Garden Tech (ampullaria Brunei Red x ventricosa) has come full circle.
I paid a handsome price for a juvenile, barely two inches across. I saw this grow into a robust plant with luscious red pitchers. It was just gorgeous.
And then the nightmare happened. I went on a two-week holiday and returned to find it with curled up leaves and bone-dry media. I quickly soaked it in water.
But the plant never fully recovered. It didn’t pitcher anymore and was just a shadow of its old self.
Finally after more than half a year of waiting for Nature to heal itself, I separated the basals and tried to root the stems. The basals quickly whittled away and I was left with just two scrawny stems. I willed them to root – they just had to!
The waiting game began. Two months on, there was still nothing to show for it. A couple more months later, I thought I saw something through the transparent cup. Yes! It was the beginnings of a root!
Once this happened, the momentum picked up and the roots grew steadily. Then came surprise number two; small reddish pitchers appeared!
Finally, two weeks ago, I removed the rooted cuttings from the cup. Each had a few small basals; my third surprise! I potted them with as much care as one would have handled a newborn.
As I held up two pots of the feisty rooted cuttings, I saw the loveliness that is to be.
Care and cultivation: mix of peat moss, pine bark, sand and perlite; bright light, slightly shielded from the hot afternoon sun; water generously. Propagate using cuttings or basals.
the original plant; its potential 🙂
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