No, I think mine start out pale green and the red color comes in as it grows. I don't have any baby pitchers on my plant right now to look at, but you can see in this picture that the left hand smaller pitcher is not as red as the larger one on the right.

Here are some photos of my pitcher plant. I think you can see the "new" growth coming out of the middle pretty good. My question is should I just cut off the hanging stems, or leave them and let them grow? I clip off the old leaves as they dry up and die. Any suggestions for care would be appreciated. Ken, you and I can learn together, eh?

You are right, Anna. We'll both learn from the reply. That being said, if this was my plant, and I did not want a sprawling-size plant, I would cut all those older stems off in the spring and root them. I am limited in space, and besides, I might be able to sell rooted plants , so large plants work against me.

A question I would follow yours with would be how is the best way to root pitcher plants? I rooted a single one last summer in 100% long-fibered sphagnum moss but I would not call that having "experience".

T-Mail coming

I'm more than willing to try and root those stems. More instruction from those that are knowledgeable, please!

Anna, I had one for years that got to be over 4ft. long, with beautiful trailing stems and dozens of 8in. pitchers. That one you have is in a big pot, I would think you could let any stems grow that have green leaves on them. It will be a rampant grower in the warm weather, especially if you keep it in your greenhouse (but open the doors to let in some bugs for it).

The big one I had, I probably should have pruned a bit, and kept it inside the pool cage where I could monitor it. Instead it got too big, so I parked it out in the garden where it got watered with well water, then didn't get enough water through a dry spell in the summer and I found it well and truly expired after that ill treatment. I'm treating this new one much better - they're not cheap, and I really like that it eats up any mosquitoes and no-see-ums that get into the cage.

I also found out recently that you should leave the pitchers on even after they are brown and dry. As long as they are holding water, they will still catch insects and help feed the plant. They do eventually crack and leak, and that's when I cut them off.

(edited to add) I've never tried to root a cutting, but I'm sure as heck going to give it a shot this spring!

When I repotted this one, I used orchid medium, as I thought I read it needed some well-draining "soil". I had to repot, the old one fell apart. LOL

I have one in a 6" pot. It is fairly large and seems to be happy with it's 18" arms and pitchers galore. I lost some baby pitchers this winter in the GH getting less humidity than it likes. But over all it seems to be happy in the pot-in-pot situation where I give it boggy conditions. Thinking of repotting this spring. Or do they enjoy being pot-bound??

I need to get a few of these pitcher plants to eat my mosquitoes! I've never had them, but they look like they'd be fun to have.

I still don't get how my pitcher will actually catch insects. I do know that the pitcher is now over 1/2 filled with liquid and I did not put any water into the pitcher. I have tried to find an insect, any kind of insect, to feed to my pitcher, but as it generally occurs, when you want to find one, it is no where to be found.

This is a nice article about Nepenthes, I love their time lapse video of how the pitchers form and catch their prey.

http://gardenofeaden.blogspot....

Neat. Thanks, Tarev.

One of my sticky cards caught a spider. I got some tweezers, pried it off the card, and dropped it into the pitcher. My plant is happy now.

drdawg said:One of my sticky cards caught a spider. I got some tweezers, pried it off the card, and dropped it into the pitcher. My plant is happy now.

Ha, you finally found it some food! I wonder how long it takes to digest a small spider?

I can send you some ants if you're short of insects, Ken . . .

Everything is frozen here, Elaine. Nothing is above ground. 26F this morning. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Eek, that's cold! We have 85 today with 50's overnight here in AZ. Lots of insects around here.

We'll have plenty of insects beginning in March. We have no short supply of them.

The video link that Tarev posted said that small insects can dissolve within hours.

I love our weather right now, but I'll be complaining bitterly in a few months when we have the triple digit heat. Even the 'dry heat' gets to be too much.

Y'all have a lot more days of the triple-digit sort, but we have some. Our problem is the 105F with 90% relative humidity, or a heat factor of 115F. Even at 95F (and we usually have many dozen days of that), the heat factor will be triple-digits.

It has to be really bad when you have that humidity with triple digit heat. That would be the time to take a trip and go to a cooler place!