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Rapid propagation.


Neil Cornish

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A leaf cutting taken about 11 months ago has now grown into a plant with a mature pitcher! I've propagated quite a few Cephs over the years from leaf cuttings and this seems by far the quickest to see a mature pitcher. This plant has also been repotted once in this time and is the normal Triffid Park clone. Two other leaf cuttings taken at the same time from Triffid Park's 'Red Lips' seem to be quite a way behind this one. What sort of time have others experienced for this event? I'd be interested to hear of other growers observations. Anyway below is the plant in question and the two other cuttings.

Cef.jpg

Regards Neil

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Hi Neil , I've got the normal clone from Triffid and its certainly more vigorous than red lips . I could only put it down to ideal conditions coupled with a vigorous clone . The only other way i can think of is if they were propagated with part of the rhizome attached but u said they were leaf cuttings so that rules that out .

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First time I've heard of a TP Cephalotus labelled as "Red Lips". Obviously another bogus marketing name. I've got another from TP that I obtained as a small plant labelled as "red form". The pitchers do go reddish in winter but the plant in indistinguishable from others during the growing season.

Oh, and I've never actually bothered trying to grow Cephalotus from leaf cuttings (I've been meaning to take some for quite awhile now but have never gotten round to it). I repot mine most years (due to substandard water quality) and manage to get plenty of extras from side shoots.

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  • 2 months later...

I have leaf cuttings that are just over 5 months old which have 20mm pitchers, both from Giant and Normal plants. Other cuttings from the same batch have tiny pitchers and some are yet to produce pitchers. Mind you, some got eaten off six weeks ago are having to regrow leaves, others the old leaf rotted, leaving just the new growth with the roots.

The bigger the leaf used the bigger the pitchers, it seems, unless the leaf produces multiple growth points. New leaves are better than previous season (over 12 month old) leaves. My seventeen month old plants that produced multiple growth points and were broken up, mostly still have small (10 mm or less) pitchers, but the ones the produced few growth points have pitchers up to 40 mm at present.

Breaking them up in their first year sets them back, from my experience. I have recently got back into growing them this way after a break of several years, so I am having to re-learn a few things from my old notes.

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A leaf cutting taken about 11 months ago has now grown into a plant with a mature pitcher! I've propagated quite a few Cephs over the years from leaf cuttings and this seems by far the quickest to see a mature pitcher. This plant has also been repotted once in this time and is the normal Triffid Park clone. Two other leaf cuttings taken at the same time from Triffid Park's 'Red Lips' seem to be quite a way behind this one. What sort of time have others experienced for this event? I'd be interested to hear of other growers observations. Anyway below is the plant in question and the two other cuttings.

Regards Neil

I had a 12 month old plant send up a flower spike. It was from a leaf cutting that I broke up into three plants at about 9 months old. At twelve months they had 30 mm pitchers. The one that flowered had not grown much since but the other two pieces have 40 mm pitchers at 17 months old.

The few flowers did not set seed.

Edited by Marcus B
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A leaf cutting taken about 11 months ago has now grown into a plant with a mature pitcher! I've propagated quite a few Cephs over the years from leaf cuttings and this seems by far the quickest to see a mature pitcher. This plant has also been repotted once in this time and is the normal Triffid Park clone. Two other leaf cuttings taken at the same time from Triffid Park's 'Red Lips' seem to be quite a way behind this one. What sort of time have others experienced for this event? I'd be interested to hear of other growers observations. Anyway below is the plant in question and the two other cuttings.

Regards Neil

I have had similar experiences with Cephalotus, particularly if there was a generous bit of rhizome attached to the leaf; often, that one will outstrip the other leaves in the same pot. The time of the year -- at least in Northern California -- also seems to play a significant role. Early Spring to High Summer seem to be the best opportunities for strikes; when attempted earlier, success was not as great . . .

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Nicely grown Neil, I also have the 'Red Form' of Cephalotus from Triffid Park which looks very similar to the typical variety. I am curious as to how the 'Red Lips' form compares to the 'Red' and typical varieties - are there any noticeable differences??

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Nicely grown Neil, I also have the 'Red Form' of Cephalotus from Triffid Park which looks very similar to the typical variety. I am curious as to how the 'Red Lips' form compares to the 'Red' and typical varieties - are there any noticeable differences??

Probably not........

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This is my best baby Giant. The pitcher is just on 20 mm high and is its first pitcher. It has had it for a few weeks now. It is about 6-6.5 months from the time of cutting the leaf. The plant along side is not far from opening a slightly smaller pitcher, also its first pitcher.

gallery_5319_277_58937.jpg

This is a normal plant with two mature pitchers, biggest 15 mm high, at just over five months old. It is its second pitcher.

gallery_5319_277_86269.jpg

Leaves growing in sphagum in propaging trays in mini green houses (open in warm weather) on lower shelf of hot house.

I will hopefull put up a photo of my, then, 13 month old plant with flower spike at a later date. It nearly gave the the rhizome cuttings a run for their money.

Marcus

Edited by Marcus B
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This is the approximately 13 month old leaf cutting with flower stalk. This is one of three plants produced by breaking up the growth points on a single leaf cutting in late winter (10th month). The plant behind it is a Giant rhizome cutting taken 3 months before photo. Big pitcher on Giant is 50 mm.

gallery_5319_277_5317.jpg

I have worked out the image posting system.

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Fantastic growth rates there Marcus............who said Cephalotus are slow? Your leaf cuttings seem to throw up pitchers before leaves whilst as far as I can remember all the leaf cuttings I've ever done have always had leaves develop first. How strange!

Regards Neil

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Fantastic growth rates there Marcus............who said Cephalotus are slow? Your leaf cuttings seem to throw up pitchers before leaves whilst as far as I can remember all the leaf cuttings I've ever done have always had leaves develop first. How strange!

Regards Neil

Looking at my photos, this appears to be so, but on close inspection of the plants you would see tiny non-carivorous leaves on the plants with big pitchers. They also have very healthy parent leaves still feeding them. When this dies it is a different story with plants looking more like yours.

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What soil mix do you use for these guys? Do they grow well in that "sphagnumish" mixture?

Greetings,

Jarkko

Live sphagnum, gravel, perlite and bit of peat. I lost all my plants in straight peat and gravel and it was only the sphagum that saved my Giant as it had no roots in the peat due to it packing too densely. If water moves through it easily they grow faster and send out more side shoots. Just be carefull of it drying out more easily.

Notes that I have, that are information from Charles Brewer, past on from John Hummmer, recommend live sphagnum and coarse sand or gravel, with very little peat, so I have plants in that mix also.

Edited by Marcus B
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These are my 2008 leaf cuttings now at about 17-18 months old. Only five leaves produced plants as I took most cuttings in early spring, taking a few in late spring. The early cuttings died off as they were old leaves from previous years growth.

Leaves 1 (three plants, including one that flowered last year) and 2 (six plants in five pots - two are from tiny rhizomes that broke off when I separated the larger pieces).

gallery_5319_277_47068.jpg

Leaves 3 (one plant) leaf 4 (one plant) and leaf 5 (two plants - one in normal peat, gravel and sphagum mix, one in spagnum and gravel mix in basket pot for deep water growth).

gallery_5319_277_73136.jpg

Not sure if any are Giant or if all are Normal form as I forgot to tag them after planting the leaves. Time will tell.

Burnt looking sphagnum marks the plants grown in the open with Sarras, dark sphagnum, ones from the hot house and window sills, bright green, from deep water in hot house.

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Well all your techniques seem to produce good reults. I'm curious about your deep water growing? Does that mean the pot your plant is growing in is almost completely submerged? Sounds risky if that is that is the case.

Here is the same pot featured in the original post. The red lips has now produced an adult pitcher and the rest of the plant and the other cutting are colouring up nicely. Could well be the same as the TP red clone. I've also attached a pic of a pitcher from the mother plant. The pitcher on the cutting may look a little black as I popped a small cricket into it a few days ago and fear I may have cause some rot :0(

Cepha1.jpg

Cepha3.jpg

Regards Neil

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Well all your techniques seem to produce good reults. I'm curious about your deep water growing? Does that mean the pot your plant is growing in is almost completely submerged? Sounds risky if that is that is the case.

Here is the same pot featured in the original post. The red lips has now produced an adult pitcher and the rest of the plant and the other cutting are colouring up nicely. Could well be the same as the TP red clone.

Regards Neil

That is looking good, but different from my memory of my Red Form. The Red plant that I got from TP was a real bright red rather than dark red or purplish. It might be responding to your stronger sunlight though. I might have to ask Donna about getting that form.

My deep water growing is basically putting plants into water lily or hydroponics pots and having the water up to the crown on hot days and half way up the pot in cooler weather. When I have a few pieces of the same plant I like to experient with them. As the weather cools down the water level will be dropped further to protect against rotting the roots.

I just found an old photo of a baby Red Form in my files. It is all red, except for the peristome, which is green with flecks of red. They are fairly new and just opening adult pitchers, with pink, rather than white, panels on the oldest pitcher. Based on this one photo, they may be different.

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My leaf cuttings produced almost only pitchers and not regular leaves. At the moment there are about 10 small (5 mm, 1/5 inch) pitchers per leaf cutting and no regular leaves. Strangely, one cutting which had more shade than others produced 2 bigger pitchers at the same time that others did lots of small pitchers. I planted them in September 2009.

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  • 2 weeks later...

hello at all..

this is my experience with leaf cutting of cephalotus follicularis labelled "Big Boy"

i 've cutted the leaf 18/03/09

this is the situation after 6 months:

dsc0330c.jpg

after 4 months:

dsc0990m.jpg

this is the situation today, after other 3 months: (something like 1 years old)

dsc05256.jpg

i think the speed of growth increase in the months.

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