chj93 Posted June 30, 2015 Report Share Posted June 30, 2015 (edited) Hi, Over the past few days this Rugelii has gone from having healthy, robust pitchers, to having ones that have rapidly turned completely shrivelled. Given that the earliest pitcher only opened mid May it seems way to soon for them to be going over naturally, especially since they have caught very little insect matter to date. So is something more suspicious going on? I've isolated the plant in case it has contracted some sort of virus that could spread through the water. Please note that the white powdery substance on the rhizome you can see in the pic is just sulphur I sprinkled on the plant last dormancy, not fungal spores. There is also some mould type substance growing on the pitcher hood, and the picture of the rhizome displays the pitcher third in from the left shrivelling also at the base. Thanks. UPDATE: I have had a trim of some of the dying/dead material and discovered that the entire rhizome doesn't look too great. There's just one small area of green growth on the rhizome (pictured below), that's surely not healthy? Is the plant just rotting away or something? I had a Moorei do this to me earlier in the year during the spring - the rhizome just seemed to go brown inside and no growth was produced so I ditched it, yet there was no evidence of any fruiting fungal spores, just as there isn't on the Rugelli. Edited June 30, 2015 by chj93 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexis Posted July 1, 2015 Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 Presumably it was sitting in water originally and didn't go dry in the baking heat? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chj93 Posted July 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 Presumably it was sitting in water originally and didn't go dry in the baking heat? Yeah, it sits in about 2 inches of water along with all of my other plants, in a big lagoon lined with pond liner, that I built into my staging. I just took it out of the water to photograph it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexis Posted July 2, 2015 Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 Looks like the instant root rot you hear about from Americsn growers sometimes. I'd throw out your peat and pots and give things a good disinfectant. How many other plants do you have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chj93 Posted July 2, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 Looks like the instant root rot you hear about from Americsn growers sometimes. I'd throw out your peat and pots and give things a good disinfectant. How many other plants do you have? The plant has been in the same peat for several years now, so I have re-potted it into some fresh mix (in a new pot). I also used the re-potting as an opportunity to have a good look at the part of the rhizome below the soil surface and trimmed off as much dead material as I could. I sprinkled a little sulphur powder on the rhizome to try to inhibit fungal growth, should any occur. I probably have about another 25 or so plants, and with this, I decided that perhaps a slightly more sensible watering regime would be to have groups of 6 plants to a plastic tray, rather than my whole collection in one lagoon. This should make cleaning of the trays easier and hopefully prevent the spread of any waterborne viruses or bacteria through all the plants, if I am unfortunate enough to have anything like that crop up. Did you think that the rhizome pictured in my first post looked particularly bad? Thanks, Chris. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexis Posted July 3, 2015 Report Share Posted July 3, 2015 It's very unusual to get rhizome death during the growing season after growing a crop of pitchers. The moorei might be unrelated, but since the rugelii is the second I'd want to do something. Separating them more seems a good idea. Hopefully it's just a blip and everything will be fine from now on. I don't think we can give much of a diagnosis other than point out the obvious fact it's not normal :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ada Posted July 3, 2015 Report Share Posted July 3, 2015 just a thought,nothing eating away at the roots or rhizome? i.e vine weevil or leather jackets. Plants can look fine for ages with them eating away at roots and rhizome before suddenly collapsing. ada Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexis Posted July 4, 2015 Report Share Posted July 4, 2015 Did you spot any brown shavings? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chj93 Posted July 4, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 4, 2015 just a thought,nothing eating away at the roots or rhizome? i.e vine weevil or leather jackets. Plants can look fine for ages with them eating away at roots and rhizome before suddenly collapsing. ada I wasn't aware of anything when I re-potted it, although I did notice that the plant was not growing any new roots, it just had older orange/brown coloured ones. I will take a closer look at the roots and see if I can notice any pests now that I know I am looking for something in particular. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chj93 Posted July 4, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 4, 2015 Did you spot any brown shavings? I will definitely have a closer look at the roots again, to see if I can observe any pests as ada suggested. What would the brown shavings be indicative of? Because I will also keep a look out for those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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