Question
QUESTION: A couple of months ago, I noticed that my pot of U. longifolia was losing a lot of leaves.  They were turning brown and rapidly drying up.  The roots looked fine, in fact they were vigorously growing out of the pot.  So I repotted it, and also sprayed the top of it with powdered sulfur, which had worked fine to knock out something it had last year that looked like powdery mildew.  But it continued to decline, and now the tops are completely dead.  Not only are all the leaves dead, but the roots immediately below the leaves have rotted away.  However, the rest of the pot is still full of clean white roots that don't appear to be rotting.  Will these roots eventually produce new plants, or is it a total loss?


ANSWER: Hi Jim,

If you still have white root material below it should recover.  It does sound like, however, that something is amiss if the leaves keep dieing off.  Usually this species is a weed and you always have some leaves.  What are your growing conditions?  What is the water source?  What type of soil media is it in?  How much light is it getting?  What are temperatures like?  Also, this is one of those situations where a picture would help diagnose the problem better.  Write me back with this information and I'll see if we can help you get your plant looking better.


Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: It was growing in an east window.  Probably not the optimum amount of sunlight in the depths of winter due to the sun rising so far south of east in northern Pennsylvania, but I'm out of room in the south windows and never got around to setting up a lighting system.  Temperatures in the room where it's growing are around 60 at night and 70 in the daytime, although the plant was probably a lot cooler at night due to its proximity to the window.  I'm using distilled water.  The plant was in your standard mix before, but when I re-potted it I put it in LFS mixed with perlite because I've seen longifolia called an epiphyte instead of terrestrial and I was worried that the standard mix was staying too wet with the plant growing so slow.  I cleaned up all the dead roots after the tops died so there's nothing to photograph.  They didn't have mold growing on them, but they were shriveled and brown.  I've moved the pot with the white roots but no surface activity to a temporary location that doesn't get direct sun but stays much warmer than the windowsill, in hopes of getting something to sprout.


Answer
Hi Jim,

We've found that U. longifolia isn't very picky about the soil media.  It does equally well in standard peat mix or LFS.  Technically it is an epiphytic species, but it often grows more like a terrestrial.

From what you're describing, the problem is probably a combination of low light and cold temperatures.  Temperatures in a window when it's really cold outside can be colder than you might think.  If you can get it just a little warmer and supplement it with artificial light, it will probably perk right up.


Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com