Expert: Sarracenia Northwest - 7/20/2010

Question
I am growing a nepenthes truncata, miranda, and ventricosa, in the Bronx of NY. Currently they're in standard nepenthes soil mix, and have two 100 watt equivalent CFL bulbs shinning on them. My question is, if you're supposed to use cfl's equivalent to 100 watts, is it possible to use LED lights that are equivalent to 100 watts to save on electricity or will the LED's lack the intensity of the cfl's?

Answer
Hi Jessica,

The subject your bringing up here is brightness, or lumens.  When we say use a cfl equivalent to 100 watts incandescent it's because that was a good minimum we could find of readily available units.  It's actually better if you can use larger ones.  Keep in mind that most Nepenthes and other carnivorous plants are high-light plants, so more is better in this case, especially if it their sole source of light.

We don't have any direct experience using newer LED lights, but the same principles would apply.  You would need to select LED lights with lumen outputs similar to the cfl's.  I do know that LED's loose intensity much faster as distance increases, so you would need to make some accommodations for that, but since they are cooler, you can easily have them closer to the plants.  I'd love to hear what kind of results you have if you use LED lights with Nepenthes.  Here's a thread on the ICPS proboards on the subject:  http://icps.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=indoor&action=display&thread=2932

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com