FlyTrapCare Forums

Hello,

I am new to carnivorous plants, I have 2 vft, a sarraceia and a nepéthes x hookeriana(windowsill ).

I bought my first sarracenia leucophylia about 3 months ago, it has been growing really well since then but I have noticed weird purple balls on the main rhizome alongside a deformed trap growing from that rhizome.

I live in Europe and it is in a west facing garden, with distilled and rain water.

Can you please help me if it’s a problem and tell me what to do because I am very worried.

Thanks for helping me

I'm horrible at growing Sarracenia and probably don't know much, but those purple bumps look like roots.

Ok thank you for your answer this is reassuring

That looks like a scale infection. They cause those deformed small pitchers with wide leaves. I had an infection a couple weeks ago and my plants looked like yours when the scale starts attacking. They’re pests and you need to spray some pesticide on it. I have an organic one that doesn’t harm the plants as much and it gets the job done, but it does leave some “burn” marks on the pitchers.

Eventually you’ll notice some black spots on the side of the pitchers, or if it gets as far as mine did, the base of the pitchers will fall off from that rhizome spot where you circled. After using the pesticide, my plants began making huge pitchers though. Pitcher jump after recovery

What pesticide did you use?

Captain Jack’s insecticidal super soap bonide for organic gardening

It has 30 listed insects it kills. I see aphids, spider mites, thrips, and scales on that list.

Thank you so much I will check this out tomorrow

Can I remove these with a knife as there are only 5 of them for now or is it better to use pesticides by precaution anyways

Thanks again for finding out what the problem is

Some people remove them with rubbing alcohol, but you do have to make sure it touches the pests to get rid of them and they are very tiny. If you already see the black spots I would definitely cut those out, but also apply the pesticide to get the ones you can’t see. Even with the pesticide I have to reapply and douse the pitchers when I see some pop up again.

Ok can I apply pesticide when it’s rainy?

Thanks for your advice

And I removed one to take a closer look and it looks like this

I wouldn’t because the rain would wash the pesticide from the pitcher sides to the dirt and it does need to touch the pests directly to kill