The First 5 photos are now. The last 4 photos are from four months ago.
This is a follow up to this post I made 4 months ago, where I asked why my Utricularia sandersonni was producing hardly any leaves despite constantly flowering.
As you can see the difference in the amount of leaves, as well as the color of the leaves is night & day compared to 4 months ago.
Instead of giving them 24 hours of light 7 days a week light before, I switched them to a 16 hour light cycle.
I also introduced a tray on the shelf above them which blocks a lot of the light coming from one of my strong grow lights. You can see this by comparing picture number 5 (now) vs. the very last picture (before). There are still 2 weaker lights directly above it that are not blocked by anything.
By just doing these changes, within 3 months they were looking a million times better. Also, this past month, I've been increasing the humidity to 90+ percent, and this seems to have accelerated their improvement even further.
A lot of people ask for help in this reddit, including myself, but its not often that we get to see a follow up that shows if our answers made a direct implant on the life/health of somebody's plant.
There is also not much material out there about U. Sandersonni preferring less light. I was a bit surprised by this. As I had always been told Sandersonii needs lots of light to keep flowering, which caused me to give them strong light 24/7 which made them sick.
There is nothing online that would suggest giving them more shade, weaker light, and shorter light cycle would improve the health of the leaves themselves. Maybe because most people only care about the flowering.
Anyway, now there is photo evidence on reddit showcasing the effects of light stress on U. Sandersonnii, and showing what 4 months of recovery looks like.
by Charming-Tradition-1
3 Comments
24/7 light constantly for any plant is too much. They need to rest. It’s not a surprise that they did not do well.
I’ve read that most plants need to “sleep” and there are few plants that tolerate 24 hr light.
My new pings started flowering over winter so I guess even low and short was enough. My nep didn’t pitcher though it’s growing in the same west window. I dunno.
24 hours for any plants is basically not recommended unless you have a specific niche reason (examples: some seedlings do great even if the adults suffer, some plants change life-cycle stages under 24hours.)
I do have to wonder if the plants even were doing bad before. Utricularia are basically subterranean plants that poke out a little at the surface. In the way that many plants have responses to high light, like changing color and leave size, I suspect the sandersonii took to a more subterranean lifestyle to shelter itself from excessive light.
Anyway, now that they’re growing well, I can advise giving them small amounts of fertilizer if you haven’t been doing that before. They’ll go crazy with flowering if you do it right.