We've been talking about carnivorous plants quite a bit this week, and as we ended

yesterday's show, we were talking about Nepenthi's, or the tropical pitcher plant.

And this is a category of carnivorous plants that Josh Brown, who's our guest this week

of predatory plants, is actively breeding and creating new cultivars of.

So I think, Josh, it would be interesting to start with just the general process.

Is it difficult to grow out new stock, whether you're making a new cultivar or not, depending

on the carnivorous plant, or is it kind of the same as other production nursery techniques?

Right.

Yeah.

There's a lot about Nepenthi's breeding specifically that does set it apart from a lot of traditional

breeding and makes it very difficult.

And is why even in 2022, I'm one of a handful of domestic breeders in the United States

producing anything, let alone large numbers of plants.

And so that should give some idea, these are popular, they've been around a long time,

and yet nobody is breeding them.

So the first part of it that makes it difficult is, these aren't easy plants to grow, they're

not easy plants to grow to maturity compared to, you know, apothos like we were talking

about.

They need some attention and they need a lot of time.

Most of them don't flower until they're five to fifteen years old.

So you need a very mature plant, making that even more difficult is each plant is either

a male or a female.

...