FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My gigantea has a leaf that looks strangely veiny, almost as if it's dying from the middle out. Normally the leaves die from the tip so this seems strange. There is also a leaf that looks like it has a cut of some sort. The picture below points out these leaves with red arrows: The ping looks a bit 'dull' and not as 'dewy' as it normally does. Are the strange leaves anything to be concerned about?

Unrelated, but this ping used to be way larger until it flowered and split. Does splitting randomly happen or do certain conditions encourage it?

Thank you!

nothing bad for me, a slightly necrotic leaf (which you can make disappear by gently pulling on it) and dry leaves (which is normal)

often the ping this divide like this (which I often see on plants coming from in vitro), you will simply have to repot them in different pots in autumn.
also note that as they get older they can make stolons

Thanks for the input... Whoa, I didn't realize pings can make stolons... How cool!

The gigantea is continuing to deteriorate and more leaves are starting to shrivel: Perhaps this is something more serious than a few bad leaves!

I hope they don't have brown heart disease. If so they are a goner. The leaves die from the center outwards. I lost 2 a few years ago from it. Still not sure how they get it.

Test the water. If using trays, check the water in the tray with a tds meter. How wet are you keeping it? How high is the TDS?

Some general advice to contemplate:
If I find a ping that is not doing well, and I know the water is OK, then I decide whether the ping is "wet" or "Dry". In other words is water wicking from the bottom of the pot to the top of the pot or is it not. That is because I use a mineral mix that is not very absorbent compared to peat/sand mix or lfsm. I can generally see, with the mineral mix, if water is wicking to the top of the pot.

If the ping has not been growing well and the pot is not wicking water to the top, then I mist the top of the pot or try top watering to see if that helps the situation. Do NOT do that if you suspect brown heart disease.

Looking at the last pic, the top plant appears to have a darker center to me and that might be from rotting leaves. If that is the case and not just an artifact of that picture, then you likely have brown heart in that plant. If so, isolate immediately. A good game plan I would try with brown heart would be to immediately dry the plant. Remove plant from pot so media is exposed to the air and let it dry a couple of days. Once dried a bit, you can put it back in the pot and start misting once a week, avoiding plant center if you can. You are drying conditions to try to slow the progress of the disease and give the plant a chance to recover or create other growth points.

If the plant continues to decline, then you might want to sacrifice it in hopes of getting new plants from any healthy leaf pulls. I would also rinse the pulls in distilled water after taking them to hopefully reduce any pathogens that might be present. Let them air dry a bit to remove excess water before placing in a humid environment. Be gentle, you don't want any wounds on the leaves.

I freely claim to be an expert at killing gigantea (but I hope I am past that now!). The above is just general advice about how I would handle that problem, but I do not know if that will work or whether you actually have brown heart. Please let us know how the plants do.

Make sure it's not too dry. I keep my giganteas and Alfred Lau #13 the darkest and most wet out of all of my pings. I always have them sitting in around 1/8 and inch of water. Also, if they are sitting in that water, make sure it's not scummy. I had scummy water in one of my trays and my giganteas in that tray weren't looking too good until I changed out the water.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the awesome info everyone!

TDS is 21 so no issues there.

The root system doesn't look amazing but I think it's OK? The presence of white roots along with the bad leaves not coming out easily makes me think it's not browning heart disease (but I have no actual knowledge on the topic). Does that make sense?

This gigantea has been growing in LFS while my other gigantea clones are in non-organic mixes. I keep this plant in a small tray separate from everything else and only fill it occasionally. It's been growing fine this way for at least a year but perhaps I got careless and let it get too dry this time.

I ended up pulling all the leaves that are in bad shape, separating the two pings (stolons indeed!), and repotting them into a non-organic mixes. I'm hoping that they'll recover if I water them properly.

Maybe it was browning heart disease... out of the two divisions, one died extremely quickly and the other doesn't appear to be in good shape. All of the pullings also died (where as previous gigantea pullings would almost always strike).
Fortunately, I have a few backup giganteas, so clones will live on. But wow, I've never seen a ping die such a gruesome death (by ping standards) before.

so the root system was not in great shape.
may be a matter of too acidic substrate.

you say even the leaf cuttings are dead?