Description
Carnivorous plants have a rabid following. It’s easy to see why: they’re fascinating, fanciful, and a bit frightening – after all, aren’t we supposed to be eating plants, rather than them eating us? No wonder Hollywood has tapped into this deep-rooted fear by featuring man-eating plants in at least 20 movies.
Now in the rainforests of Asia, at the jungle intersection of bizarre, awesome, and functional you’ll find the Nepenthes tropical pitcher plants, a genus of incredibly stunning, and hungry, plants. Larger specimens of Nepenthes have been known to catch shrews or even rats (must be pretty lazy ones, as it’s hard to see how a rat couldn’t simply bite right through the pitcher and escape, but that’s exotic plant marketing for you; been going on a long time, really).
Another colorful name for these colorful plants is the “monkey’s cup plant” – just imagine monkey taking a sip out of one of these pitchers after a long day of swinging around the jungle. Of course, the pitcher sizes vary with species and age of the plant. On younger plants they start off as cute little things not much longer than a fingernail, but on a mature plant of one of the larger Nepenthes species, they’re comparable to large beer mugs or even Super Big Gulps.
Except with Nepenthes, there’s no gulping involved, just slow (weeks-long) digestion by enzymes and a bit of acid (harmless to people, although please don’t be a monkey and drink from a full pitcher).
They’re definitely exotic, and that usually makes potential growers shrink away for fear of killing an exotic plant. Fortunately, the type we’re offering here, Nepenthes ventricosa, is among the easiest of all Nepenthes to grow, and can do just fine on your windowsill!
As for feeding, plants grown outside will catch their own bugs to eat, but if you grow indoors, you can put bugs into the pitchers (avoid meat, as it’ll rot).
