Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tropical Garden #7, 0 by fredrump

fredrump wrote:
This pitcher plant, along with various orchid cacti and other plants, was given to me for my 70th birthday recently. Never had one before. (people know what I want for my birthdays)

The plant was in a small pot which I quickly repotted so it could expand a bit. It is now thanking me for the room. The plant is a bog native and is one of the 70 different Nepenthes 'monkey cups'. It is a native of Southeast Asia and Australia, forms pitchers (cups) that hang from trees. Its pitcher relies on a pool of water to trap its prey. It has a most unusual leaf that first looks like a normal leaf, then develops a tendril at its tip, and finally the tip of the tendril develops an amazing pitcher. It gains support by twining the tendril around another plant. The trap lures its prey into the pitfall trap by a combination of decaying odors and sometimes a red coloration. As the pitcher develops, it swells and droops due to its weight.

As it matures, it suddenly begins to inflate with air. Once inflated it begins to fill with liquid, then opens, revealing the enticing interior. The top of the trap has a lid that initially covers the pitcher until growth is complete. When the leaf is fully grown, the lid opens and the trap is ready.

Kind of neat to watch this process. Anybody else have one in their garden? Mine is under an overhead sprinkler which also keeps the various ferns, including the staghorns, in the background happy. There's even an orchid in the live oak.

A tropical garden is what I had always dreamed of having one day. Life is good even though I woke up early today for some unknown reason and reverted to my plants even if it is on the computer. :-)

Fred