Windowsill Nepenthes

Sometime in the last 6 months I wound up acquiring a few Nepenthes. I've been pretty vocal about not really caring for neps, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how nice it's been to have them on the windowsill in my kitchen. It's a pretty ideal environment for them – higher-than-average humidity, cool nights, convenient for watering. They make the kitchen much more festive!

This Nepenthes sanguinea is the largest of my windowsill neps.

N. sanguinea looking all clumpy. Nice!

Pretty good color too.

There are two separate growth points, and a huge amount of pitchers. This is a pretty ideal plant right now. Dunno what I'll do in a year or two when it starts vining everywhere, but that's a bridge to cross when we arrive at it.

This Nepenthes tobaica × aristolochioides was impossible to resist when I saw it at California Carnivores in July.

Cute little thing.

I like the leaves too.

The pitchers are nice and squat, with a good dark color. Apparently it stays fairly compact too, which is a definite plus for someone who does not want to mess around with greenhouses etc.

This cute little Nepenthes ventricosa definitely gets the most attention from house guests.

Just hanging out, you know.

I guess I can't really blame them. It's pretty cute.

Off in the corner, getting a lot less light, is the big old vine of a Nepenthes ×ventrata I got a year or so ago. It doesn't pitcher much, but at least it does so in a manner that is consistently hilarious – right in the dish rack.

My current houseguests aren't great at loading a dish rack.

Keep on truckin' guy.

Nepenthes ×ventrata in the dish rack

I'm not that big on Nepenthes. I mean, I can appreciate a beautiful specimen as well as the next guy, but it's just not the genus I'm interested in growing. However, some time back someone was giving away rooted Nepenthes ×ventrata cuttings and well then I had this plant that I a) didn't really know how to care for and b) didn't care to do too much research about.

I planted it in a mix of LFS and perlite and stuck near a window in my kitchen. The vine produced one pitcher, then a basal, and then the basal started producing pitchers. One of the tendrils found its way into my dish rack and set up shop.

All set up.

The tendril is actually formed to the rack – there's a little crook that lets it prop itself up on the edge. We haven't had the heart to move it, and now I guess we've just got to be careful when doing dishes for the next couple months.

The plant seems to be fairly happy here at least. There's another pitcher developing from the basal.

I like watching the pitchers swell.

As well this guy, which I would call an upper pitcher if I knew enough about Nepenthes to say such things with certainty.

It adds a bit of color to the grey and white kitchen area.

The plant is definitely a bit scraggly, but I don't mind. It's not too needy, and it's pitchering, so I'm gonna call it a success.

Looking romantic in the dappled sun. Hah.

In other pitcher news, I took a trip to California Carnivores and picked up a couple new plants for my outdoor lagoons – Drosera filiformis and Sarracenia 'Red Bug'.

My first temperate sundew!

By the way, a couple weeks after I set these lagoons up I noticed that they were absolute overrun with mosquito larvae. Since I didn't want my Sarracenia setup to be the source of a West Nile outbreak, I got some Gambusia (mosquito fish) and released them into the ponds. I haven't seen a larva in weeks. And the fish seem happy enough.

Swimming around as happy as you please.

They're hard to see in a photo, but when I'm out looking at the plants they swim around. It's pretty cute!