Nepethes leaves quantity

[edwardyeeks]

All these years, I've been growing a number of neps, seen many die and tried again. It just hit me, I have never really noticed the reason why neps have few leaves sometimes and other times, more than 6 leaves. I had always thought that fewer leaves mean a less healthy neps, but after seeing many other neps from pictures from the wild and other forumers, I do not find that true.

Take for example, my dyeriana has leaves that were put out nearly 4 months ago. And those leaves haven't dried up until now.

[Leetplayer]

You mean the pitchers?

[edwardyeeks]

Leaves. Like, some neps only have 3-4 leaves that aren't dried. Others have nearly 10 leaves still healthy. Sometimes the same nep have different number of leaves. Just very curious

[tzestan]

I think every species is different. My bical never have more than 8 leaves in one stem. Most other species I have, between 10-20 leaves. Ventrata has more than 20.

Probably it does not matter much as long as new healthy leaves with pitchers are replacing fast enough.

[Marigoldsfail21]

I agree. It seems that it simply differs between species more than anything. My truncatas never seem to go past 5 leaves, and yet my sanguinea has had close to 20 for a while now and is just now losing leaves from over a year and a half ago.

I find that one of the best ways to tell the overall health of neps is just to look at the newest, most recent leaves. They usually show if anything is wrong since they are so sensitive to conditions as they develop before they fully mature and start producing pitchers.

[sooxiwei]

As long as they pitcher well, it doesn't seems to matter much, if the new leaf is growing much smaller than previous one, it could be a sign of trouble

for me, almost all my neps have less than 5 green leaves at a time, but they are all doing well even though it does not looks nice to me