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Cephalotus vertical growing


PurplePitchers

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm planning to buy tree fern (Cyathea contaminans). It's sold as background material for terrariums. Is your tree fern the same species? And, how fast will it start to grow? These are sold as panels: http://www.luckyreptile.com/products/145/en/pid1,0$pid2,7772743/products.html. Nice job on the cephalotus!

Different species, but most likely close enough. I mainly use the local ones that are the other genus (we have both genera locally). What I use is the dead parts cut off the bases of the trunk. They are cut back to the live tissue before planting in gardens. The species that you are referrign to is foreign to Austalia, but is apparently about the fastest growing. It might get a bit big for a tank if the tree-fern itself grows. It may just support the growth of other ferns as our local slabs do. Spores of other ferns lodge in the stems of many tree-ferns.

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  • 2 months later...

Update - The biggest pitchers are now a bit over 50 mm. This is a "Typical" which normally only has pitchers up to a little over 40 mm. More proof that growing conditions can result in bigger pitchers on "Typical" plants. It is also growing much faster than the plants that were bigger than it, from the same batch, which are still in small pots.

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Edited by Marcus B
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  • 2 weeks later...

Let put it this way, it is a cleaned up version of what I used. It calls it a tree-fern root, but it is more likely all stem anyway. The hollowed out section is the hard core, which I removed to insert the Ceph. It is well worth trying.

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  • 11 months later...

I have found one drawback of growing Cephs on Treefern. In consistently warm weather the plants die off more readily than pots that can be immersed in water. I have had my two well established plants die right back and lost one that I was trying to establish on Tree fern.

The survivors are starting to re-grow now the heat is over, but I was starting to think the Treefern was killing the Ceph until I realised that the other airy set ups were suffering the same problem. As the heat persisted, the problem spread through my collection.

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I was recently looking at this website, http://www.dartfrog.co.uk/epiweb/ and having just read this thread, was wondering if this would perhaps be more suitable, as it includes a spray bar watering system (Integrated Irrigation System) which may help to keep the plants cooler on hot days.

Really like the idea and the plant looks great in the photo's.

Best regards,

Ian.

Edited by Ian_P
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I bought a solar powered pump for that purpose but it has not proved to be very reliable. The issue is that during the recent summer we had a long period of warm weather without cool breaks. So pots stayed warm and the water I had around plants warmed up. I did not get the water changed as often I should have. Those open to the air also warmed up and stayed warm.

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  • 5 months later...

Update on my Cephs growing on Tree-fern slabs.

It would seem that after a year of doing well on the Tree-fern that this experiment has failed. The moss started to die off and the cephs had to be removed (although I have left one to see if it survives). It would appear that the fern stem breaks down over time, making it unsuitable for Cephs in the long term. At a guess, I would say the nutient levels got too high for the Cephs to cope with.

I am currently trialing a basket pot on top of an ordinary pot as I have issue with growth coming out of the sides of baskets dying off when I have to raise water levels to keep them cool in summer. Not raising the water level seemed to result in the airy pots getting too warm on hot days.

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