Nepenthes aristolochioides
is a tropical pitcher plant endemic to Sumatra, where it grows at elevations of 1800–2500 m above sea level. It has an extremely unusual pitcher morphology, having an almost vertical opening to its traps. It is critically endangered by overcollection.
what do you feed these guys…flies?? Black ones??
That’s some far out plants for sure!! Would you want to own one one day?
Very cool plant indeed … thanks for sharing
I have pitcher plants , they feed them selves for the most part - the fluid in the pitcher which is in layman’s terms a digestive enzyme produces an odor - that attracts insects to investigate the scent …and once inside they cant climb back out because of downward facing hairs and a waxy coating… but I always spoil mine with what ever flies I can catch with my hands inside the house …hope this helps out
I had a 2 foot plant outside on the deck that had a frog in 1 pitcher it was happily digesting …
Wishing I grabbed some seeds when I ordered. I just got 5 different drosera seed packs…pitchers have been catching my eye though.
We have a native pitcher plant in MA called a Jack-in-the-pulpit, that eats fungus gnats.
The males have a little hole at the bottom of the pitcher so not all of the bugs get stuck, some of them have to crawl through a tunnel, to escape drenched in pollen. When they fly inside a female Jack-in-the-pulpit there’s no hole from which to escape, so they struggle and flail as death takes hold, tossing pollen around the chamber until they gradually melt into a pool of bottled nutes.
We have those here in Ontario too. I didn’t know they did that to pollinate, very clever design!
We saw tons of weird and rare pitcher plants on cape Breton Island a few years ago. Such a beautiful place.
That would be a great companion plant in the grow room for keeping the fungus gnats down, I wonder where you can buy them.
It is really nice there, we usually stay at Auld Farm B&B just outside Beddeck, they have a big plant nursery there as well. Never saw any pitcher plants though.
Awesome! I saw some kinda similar but not as unique ones when I was on Borneo a couple years back. What an amazing part of the world.
In Michigan we have a jack in the pulpit. I was told it’s endangered and not to pick it when I was younger…we had picked a bouquet.
The only carnivorous plant I have is VFT…
@JustSumTomatoes I think has some carnivorous plants.
I like this one…
Mine do all their own feeding. Technically you don’t have to feed them though. Even without the bugs they can do well.
I just found out a few days ago that there are a lot of different strains of pitcher plants…I also decided not to get the carnivorous seed mix from Home Depot .
With Asian pitchers, there are one’s which have yet to be discovered by western science. Pick an uncharted mountain in Borneo and go exploring and you may find one or two new species and get to name them. Check this out…https://youtu.be/K_qmcG2Epaw
So basically all plants are miners. They mine macro nutrients (N, P, K) and micronutrients (Zn, Mn, Fe, Cu, Mo, and Cl) from the medium they grow in, and sometimes through their leaves. These technically are not plant food as plants feed themselves by producing their own glucose in a reaction called photosynthesis. The macro/micronutrients are catalysts for this reaction…
6CO² + 6H²O + Sunlight----> C⁶H¹²O⁶ + 6O²
Carnivorous plants grow in nutrient depleted soil, but there are still traces of them. They are extremely efficient at mining these thus can survive without insect prey. They are so efficient that regular soil will cause severe nutrient burn and kill them. They do get extra nutrients by trapping insects in their leaves and typically do better with it, but can go without prey because of this.
I found a couple of places online but most are sold out. One said new crop in April.
The plant just like the one above was ~$100 on one site, $35’ish for crosses of it. It looks like there are quite a few places that sell carnivores and nepenthes.
