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Carnivorous Plants/Cloning Asian Pitchers

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Expert: - 6/13/2007


Question
Whats the best way to clone an asian pitcher plant???

Answer
Hello Jeremy,

One of the easiest methods of "cloning" a Nepenthes for a garden variety grower like me would be taking cuttings and rooting them like ivy cuttings with rooting hormone and a lot of patience.

If you have the space and resources, you could make your own small lab to clone your plants in a controlled and sterile environment with agar dishes and tissue culture scrapings from parent plants. That method requires much more work and is typically used by carnivorous plant nurseries to create stocks for a wide variety of plants that are hard to acquire seeds from or require special considerations to obtain reproductive material from.

I'm sure that if you asked Sarracenia Northwest, they could elaborate on cloning from tissue culture.

Cuttings are the easier way to go for most of us, though we have to wait for a few years to get a Nepenthes big enough to take cuttings from.

Christopher

Carnivorous Plants

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Christopher Littrell

Expertise

I am capable of answering questions about the most common carnivorous plants found in cultivation. I have no personal experience with Byblis, Drosophyllum, Aldrovanda, and Heliamphora. I have not cultivated gemmae forming pygmy sundews nor tuberous sundews. For information regarding those aforementioned species, I would suggest contacting other experts. I can answer questions regarding most species of Nepenthes, tropical and temperate Drosera, Mexican Pinguicula, Sarracenias, and Dionaea. I have some limited experience with growing Utricularia, Cephalotus, and Darlingtonia.

Experience

I have grown carnivorous plants off and on for about 27 years. I have made the same mistakes and suffered the same mishaps that many growers make as they attempt to separate the myths from the realities of growing these plants. Currently, I am successfully growing a variety of tropical sundews, a Nepenthes, several Venus Flytraps of varying ages, and Sarracenias. I have been successful in stratifying Sarracenia seeds and providing artificial dormancy requirements for my temperate plants when needed.

Education/Credentials
I hold a Master's degree in Educational Psychology. Over my lifetime, I have constantly read books involving the growing conditions of carnivorous plants. I hope to incorporate the educational aspects involved in psychology with teaching other people how to cultivate carnivorous plants.

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