Veitch's pitcher-plant

Description

Nepenthes veitchii is a Nepenthes species from the island of Borneo. The plant is widespread in north-western Borneo and can also be found in parts of Kalimantan. Nepenthes veitchii usually grows as an epiphyte, though the form from Bario seems to be strictly terrestrial and has not been observed to climb trees. Frederick William Burbidge described the growth habit of N. veitchii in The Gardeners' Chronicle as follows: Now as to N. Veitchii. This is a true epiphyte. I never met with it on the ground anywhere, but in great quantity 20—100 feet high on tree trunks. Its distichous habit is unique, I fancy, and then some of the leaves actually clasp around the tree just as a man would fold his arms around it in similar circumstances. No other species of Nepenthes, so far as I know, has this habit. Odoardo Beccari found N. veitchii on the top of Mount Santubong in 1865. He wrote the following account of his discovery: This is one of the finest and rarest of all pitcher-plants. Some of the specimens I got measured quite ten inches in length. The mouth of the pitcher in this species is certainly its most conspicuous and remarkable part by reason of its rich orange colour and its vertical position. It is also a perfect trap to entice insects into its interior, attracting them from a distance by its bright colours. Sir Joseph Hooker compares the mouth of the pitchers of N. veitchii to the gills of a fish, to which, indeed, with their narrow lamellae converging to the centre, they bear considerable resemblance. Nepenthes veitchii is thought to be closely related to N. robcantleyi from the Philippines. It has also been compared to N. truncata. Nepenthes is a genus of carnivorous plants, also known as tropical pitcher plants, or monkey cups, in the monotypic family Nepenthaceae. The genus comprises about 170 species, and numerous natural and many cultivated hybrids. They are mostly liana-forming plants of the Old World tropics, ranging from South China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines; westward to Madagascar (two species) and the Seychelles (one); southward to Australia (four) and New Caledonia (one); and northward to India (one) and Sri Lanka (one). The greatest diversity occurs on Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippines, with many endemic species. Many are plants of hot, humid, lowland areas, but the majority are tropical montane plants, receiving warm days but cool to cold, humid nights year round.