Bicals, Bicals, Bicals & Longifolia!

Nepenthes bicalcarata

I love bicals. They're my favorite lowlanders. It probably won't surprise any of my longtime readers to hear me say that or that I have quite a few bicals. One of the neat things about growing the same species from multiple locations and with multiple traits is that you get the chance to compare the species characteristics. Some bicals, for instance, have pitchers with large fangs, boxy pitches, and a light yellow coloration blushed with orange. Others have short fangs, elongated pitchers, and orange pitchers blushed with deep red.

Nepenthes bicalcarata
(Same Pitcher as 1st Photo)

One of the things that these differences tell me is that a single species may have a wide range in terms of pitcher morphology. That makes me a little more skeptical when it comes to descriptions of "species" with overlapping ranges and very closely allied morphology. I'm hopeful that, in time, DNA analysis can replace the still used and antiquated  process of morphological description in describing species. It'll be a while, I'm sure, but I imagine that once such a process becomes cheap and easy, it will become a standard requirement for describing species.

Nepenthes bicalcarata

But we're not here to talk about the future of plant identification, we're here to look at some awesome plants. And the plants in the lowland grow tent are awesome! Since moving to that tent about two months ago, the plants have flourished. With the installation of the new MistKing, that progress has only increased.

Nepenthes longifolia

That increase in growth can probably be best seen in this Nepenthes longifolia. When it arrived from California in early December, it was not happy to have traveled through the cold. Yet, less than two months later, it started to produce some nice pitchers at the ends of nice, new leaves. Everything's looking good!