Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Nepenthes 'Judith Finn' won't stop flowering

The Nepenthes hybrid 'Judith Finn' is a cross of highlanders, Nepenthes veitchii and Nepenthes spathulata. It does well under lowland conditions too, and I've at least always grown mine on the warmer side with good results. This one I grew from seeding to flowering maturity in under 5 years. It's too bad it's a male though, I've got some other Neps in flower, but they're all males too so no pollination of my own plants anytime soon.

It begins..
Close up of the buds forming
Opening

Not the fanciest of flowers. Stamen, but no pistil, clearly an androecious plant.

#2 starting
#3 starting about two weeks after #2
This Nep has always acted strange. It seemingly randomly chooses leaves on the vine to kill off, never the oldest ones first.Three blooms, one straight after another would be surprising on any other pitcher plant, but who knows why this one does anything it does really.

I didn't have any good photos of the pitchers on my digital camera and I can't take any now as they are small and pathetic looking compared to the ones it was making before flowering. It's clearly putting almost all it's energy into making sure it reproduces. I'd be worried as some plants will flower if they are dying as a last ditch effort to continue the species, but this one is still really healthy otherwise.

Here are some pitcher pictures I had taken for Instagram at least:

Growing a new shoot from a stem I thought was dead



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