FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hello everybody, long time no see. I recently got my passion back for carnivorous plants as it started to fade away a couple of months ago.
In the meantime my Cephalotus died , but I got a new one. We also got a greenhouse and that is what my questions are about. My drosera and pinguicula seem to do pretty well, but I’d also like to have my Cephalotus in the greenhouse as well. The temperatures rise to around 35-38 degrees Celsius in the shade. Is this too hot for the Cephalotus? There is a temperature drop at night to around 19°C and can even get as low as 15°C if we have had a very sunny day and there are no clouds at night.

I can also grow it outside right now as the temperatures are around 25°C and drop to 15°C (maybe 10°C) (???), but then I have less control in watering them and the effects of dramatic weather that we sometimes get in The Netherlands.

I could also place it inside the greenhouse in the evening and put it outside in the morning, depending on the weather, but that wouldn't be ideal I think.

The temperature brings me to another question, but first a little background. The greenhouse is in a spot where the sun shines on it the whole day, except for late evening. In the afternoon it can get pretty hot. In the sun the temperatures can rise to 40-43°C, but in the shade it is around 35-38°C as mentioned before. I read somewhere that you have to measure the air temperature and not the sun temperature. That would mean that you'd have to measure the temperature in a shadowy place. Does this mean that I can take the shade cloth down (although the sun temperatures are very high), because the air temperature is 6-7°C cooler (in the shade)? Or is the sun cloth, that blocks the sun from like one pm to the rest of the evening, useful?
Of course the window and door is open to have some airflow and cooler air.

Those are my questions. Thanks for reading this long story!
Teye

While I haven't really explored the environmental limits of Cephalotus myself, I would expect them to do well in those conditions. Heat sensitive plants like Darlingtonia can handle the heat as long as you have <20C nights and Cephalotus should be similar. I definitely wouldn't be a bad idea to give the plants some shade during excessively hot days.

Thank you very much for your reply! I will keep it in the greenhouse and if the temperatures really go crazy, I will put it outside (maybe in summer as I don't know how the temperatures will be then).
One more question: can I still repot it one of these days? And what would be the best way to do it?

Teye. I will post a picture of the plant later .

You should be very careful repotting Cephalotus. They tend to get shocked by root disturbance and it's highly recommended to keep them bagged afterwards (out of the sun of course) until they resume normal growth.

I was in a hurry and I might have been a little unclear; with repotting I meant trying to get the pot loose from the soil, not touching the roots (and the soil itself) and putting it in a bigger pot with better soil around it.
I know they are very sensitive (I lost my two leaf pullings by being uncareful (lesson learnt the hard way)), so I don't want to disturb the roots. I just want to give the plant more space to grow and a bigger pot so there is less chance of the roots standing in water (which, of course, I am very careful about).
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me, Nimbulan!

Yeah if you can keep the root ball intact, the plant won't even notice the change. Good luck!

Thank you!
One last question: I see some people plant their Cephalotus in a clay/terracotta pot. Doesn’t this hurt the plant by leaching minerals into the soil? Are there any other disadvantages by having them in a clay pot? And would it be okay if I plant my Cephalotus in a clay pot?

I went for safe and got a plastic pot. It is pretty big, but I think the Cephalotus will like it.
I hope the ceph will easily recover of the transplant. Whilst cutting the pot open, some of the soil fell off and I saw just about a centimetre of the root of the ceph. I hope this won't be a problem?
I used about 2 parts perlite and 1 part peat (2:1) and the pot is like 20-30 cm in height. I'm happy I did repot the plant, as the soil it was in was very "peaty".
Any tips on the aftercare? Anything I could do to make the transplant less stressful?

Some pictures:

I think you'll be fine there. Exposing a small bit of root shouldn't matter. About the clay pot - I don't have any experience but from what other people have grown this species in, I don't think it'll matter.

Some 70% shade cloth over the GH during hot weather helps a lot with preventing sunburn on the plants. I leave it on my GH year round because CA is ridiculously sunny, but YMMV.