Nepenthes culture and offerings of pitcher plants and carnivorous plants Nepenthes Nepenthes are carnivorous plants known for their vining habit and fantastic pitchers which grow at the ends of leaves. Many of the plants are extremely rare and not often available for purchase. These plants do produce flower spikes usually colored in yellow, green, or mahogany.
Plants are either male or female.
Pitchers on the end of the leaves allow the plants to collect their food in nature, as they grow on extremely poor soils and have developed pitchers as a method of trapping insects in order to dissolve them and assimilate their proteins, sugars, and nutrients into the plants for their own development. They have special digestive glands for attracting insects and hairs for keeping them in the pitcher as well as enzymes to dissolve them. There are different cycles of natural organisms that live in the plant as well. In nature, they can be found growing in sphagnum mosses, in straight silica sand on limestone cliffs, or wherever there are mosses and sufficient moisture for them to germinate and grow. They all appreciate growing in New Zealand sphagnum moss and require rainwater, distilled, or reverse osmosis water to do their best.