Question
Good day,

I recently bought an N. Caesar from Sarracenia NW. It arrived on March 5th, 2008. Since then, I have kept its daytime temperatures at around 75-77 degrees F, and have given it a night time temperature drop down to about 64-67 degrees F. I have also kept the relative humidity at around 50 percent. In that time, it has opened a new leaf, but pitcher production seems to have become stunted. I did some research and found out that N. Merrilliana is a tropical plant, and so requires humidity around 75 percent and constant temperatures. Should I give it tropical conditions  with very little temperature change at night and a high humidity, or should I continue giving it the 10 degree temperature drops? Thanks for your help, Yan

Answer
Hi Yan,

Don't worry about humidity.  Focus primarily on light, water and temperature.  As long as you take care of these factors, the plant will adapt to the changing humidity of your climate.  Plants rarely die from low humidity.  With Nepenthes, you might see smaller pitchers and shorter leaves when grown in low humidity, but the plant will rarely cease growing altogether as long as you meet its light, water and temperature needs.

(Of all the gadgets that we have at our nursery, it's a hydrometer that we don't have! This is how unimportant we regard humidity. Last summer, had record low humidity for the region, 14%.  While some Nepenthes stopped pitchering, most faired the weather just fine and continued to produce pitchers, though they were smaller than usual.)

While N. merrilliana is one of the parent plants, N. truncata is what gives Caesar its resiliency and vigor.  N. trunctata is a true intermediate plant, which means it can grow well in both lowland and highland conditions.  In this case, it almost doesn't matter if you choose to drop the nighttime temperature below 70癋 or not.  I'd say don't worry about it and save yourself on electricity by letting the temperature drop into the 60s at night.  If anything, your growing conditions are warmer than ours.  

Just make sure to also give your plant plenty of sunlight and water.  Never allow the soil to dry out; always keep the soil moist. As light levels and temperature increase, your plant will resume normal pitcher production.  Even our stock plants that customers have reserved for shipment later in spring don't have any pitchers on them.  This is normal when growing these plants in the continental US rather than in sunny Hawaii.

Good growing!
Jacob Farin