Question
Sarracenia Alata
First of all thank you for reading my concern. Well i am having a problem with my sarracenia alata. I've been having this plant since about August 2008. Well the problem that this plant is not growing how its supposed to. The leaves are soft and lanky and instead of growing straight up they seem to be curling up. I know that this is what happens when you grow them in a terrarium but the problem is that ever since i have purchased it from you guys i have always had it outside with a minimum of 7 hours of sunlight. I have always keep it outside including in the winter and have tried to provide with distilled water most of the time. In some few occasions i have pour in water from the hose (i don't have a water softener) but for the most time it has been distilled. All of my other carnivorous plants have been growing well except this one. Also, I noticed that during winter time most of my carnivorous plant grew many phyllodia leaves except this one with just producing very few. I have changed the soil and cut off all of the old leaves. The leaves in this picture i am providing are from this year. I live in Los Angeles, CA and recently we been having a weird weather but all of the plants see to be holding well except this one. Also, it is a large sarracenia. Can you help me out please? i don't know what's going on with the plant. Thank You.
AnswerHi Jesse,
YIKES! You have a classic case of aphids! Sometimes you won't see aphids on the leaves because they only attack young growth. As the pitcher matures, their tiny pokey thing (technical term) to extract the plant juice is not strong enough to pierce the mature leaf. So the aphids move on. Unfortunately, the leaf is already damaged internally, and it grows funky after that.
To prevent future leaf damage, spray your plants with Systemic Insect Killer by Ortho? We use this product occasionally in spring time to prevent this time of plant deformation. Follow the directions on the bottle.
Keep in mind that once the damage is done, it's permanent. There's nothing you can do to reverse the deformation. Keep the deformed leaves in place until you have a set of normal pitchers. After that you can cut off the deformed leaves.
Good growing!
Jacob Farin
