Question

3 in diameter pitcher   QUESTION: I live on the coast of Georgia in brunswick. I got my small pitcher plant (unkonwn, but probably ventricosa) from Lowes. Since i potted it up, it has been doing well. It has double in size and is now closer to 3 inches in diameter. Even when I broke a piece off a few months ago by accident, I stuck it in the soil and it continued to grow. My question is now with the "main" plant. It's putting out leaves as a regular rate, but now I've noticed the stem is turning brown from the bottom up. It's gotten to the first leaf, and I did kind of think that leaf turned yellow prematurely. Is this stem turning brown normal? It seems very flimsy? If not, I want to cut it and try to put it in the soil like the other piece.
They're in a large pot for their size, it's probably a pot 6inch in diameter. They are in a west-south window and get bright morning sun and little evening. In the picture, you can see the cutting on the left, the one I rooted, it had a little too much sun from growing too close to the window. But you can see the browning stem on the plant to the right.
I water all my plants with distilled water

ANSWER: Hello J,

Normally, Nepenthes do brown from the ground up as they age. I have a Nepenthes sanguinea that has a set of long, brown, woody vines atop which a set of green leaves resides.

One point to consider when watering Nepenthes is that they should not be tray watered. A fraction of an inch of water in a tray under the pot is fine if it is absorbed in a day or so and the larger the pot the better in the case of watering. It is when water is left to sit under the pot for days that Nepenthes can suffer root rot, however; root rot is generally detected by the plant browning from the top down. You did not describe how much they are watered or if any water is left under the pots in a tray, but I just wanted to provide some additional information just in case.

So long as you water often, but only enough to keep the moss moist all the time, you should be fine.

What kind of soil did you use to pot the plants? Anything with fertilizer can harm and kill carnivorous plant, however; Nepenthes seem slightly more tolerant of fertilizers in the soil, but less is better in this regard to keep moss acidity up.

At this point, it is difficult to say exactly what species it is, but you are probably right about it being a ventricosa. The leaf pattern looks like a ventricosa.

Broken off vines can and will root in moist soil or in a vase of water like Ivy in many species of Nepenthes.

Christopher

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QUESTION: Oh! I'm sorry. I did forget to mention soil and water. I knew I was missing something. Well, I don't tray water really, and it's only a small dish at the bottom. I do sometimes put water in there, but the pot is tall and the dish low I don't think it get's even half way up the pot. They're in pure peat moss, or at least, the one in the left is. The right one is in the peat as well but has a bit of pure sphagnum mixed in from when I first got it. I expect it's outgrown the moss by now and is in the peat. I do water it only when it starts to look drier and I keep it moist for the plant. Is this browning of the stem normal in plants so young?
Thanks so much!

Answer
Hello J,

The main thing to watch for is continued growth from the vine tip. Yes, younger Nepenthes are not likely to produce woody lower growth, however; as they reach a certain peak age, they do tend to produce a brown stem and allow several lower leaves to die back rapidly. Kind of like a new pattern of growth beginning. Hopefully this is what your young Npenthes is doing.

Christopher