Nepenthes robcantleyi

Description

Nepenthes robcantleyi, or Robert Cantley's pitcher plant, is a tropical pitcher plant endemic to the Philippine island of Mindanao. It is closely allied to N. truncata and was once considered a dark, highland form of this species. Nepenthes veitchii from Borneo is also thought to be a close relative. The pitchers of N. robcantleyi are exceptionally large, reaching 40 cm in length by 10 cm in width. The inflorescence, at up to 2.5 m long, is the tallest among known Nepenthes species. The plant itself does not grow very tall, however, and is not known to climb. The specific epithet robcantleyi honours Robert Cantley, who was involved in the plant's discovery, propagation, and introduction to cultivation. Nepenthes robcantleyi was discovered by Robert Cantley in January 1997, on a remote mountain on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Cantley was exploring the site in search of N. truncata seeds for his recently established plant nursery, Borneo Exotics. The site lay within a logging concession and Cantley was accompanied by the head of security for the company with the logging rights to the area. Near the top of a small hill Cantley found a number of typical N. truncata plants as well as two mature individuals of a striking, previously unknown taxon. Though bearing very dark pitchers with well-developed wings and a wide, flared peristome, the plants closely matched N. truncata in leaf morphology and were at the time assumed to represent a robust highland variant of this species. One of these plants bore a mature infructescence that had already dispersed "nearly all" of its seeds. Cantley collected the few remaining seeds from this plant. The darker of the two plants which later became known as the "black N. truncata" on account of its almost completely black pitchers was growing in full sun and measured around 1.5 m in diameter, being "not yet mature". The original population discovered by Cantley is now thought to be extinct, as the area was cleared shortly after Cantley's visit (in 1997) and two trips in the subsequent two years failed to find any surviving plants.