Very nice pix, Jeff. The Nepenthes macrophylla is a beauty - I'm fervently hoping that mine will look like this in a coupla years...
I also have N. faizaliana from MT and it is nearly identical to the image of the plant that Tony posted (it is rather darker overall, almost certainly from outdoor culture). One of the things that I've noticed about this particular plant is that the pitchers are formed very, very slowly, but that they last forever. I have one 20 cm tall lower that is just starting to brown after a year. Much more than N. fusca, this sp. reminds me of some highly-colored N. stenophylla clones. Lovely, thick, shiny leaves, too.
My two cents on the issue of Nepenthes taxonomy: one of the very real problems with unusual "ornamental" plants of all kinds is that new descriptions are driven more by the desire of the horticultural trade to offer a bigger selection (more species = more potential sales), or the desire by amateur botanists to publish, than by the interests of comparative botany. In spite of this bias, most of the new carnivorous taxa being described these days appear to be "good". An additional aggravation is that collectors naturally gravitate to/take the "showier" examples in a given colony to serve as the type series, which may not necessarily best represent the whole of the population. As a further complication, species that are thinly-distributed in very remote regions often yield very few type specimens (sometimes, only the holotype!) to "first contact", and these individuals also may not represent the species in its totality. And finally, when dealing with the genus Nepenthes specifically, you have the added complications of intraspecific variability deriving from environmental factors (exposure, elevation, etc.), dramatic ontogenetic changes as the plant progresses from rosetted seedling to hemiepiphytic or epiphytic vine, and the genetic "pollution" from pollen imported into the deme from species that occur in sympatry.
I suspect that, as our knowledge grows and our understanding of the family improves, we may find that several "good" species that we grow today may either be sunk, or be found to represent particular, fairly stable forms within hybrid swarms.
As an aside, what I find to be an amazing coincidence is that the coveted "post-modern toilet bowl" Nepenthes types (jacquelinae, platychila, and Andreas Wistuba's newest sp. nov.) are all being described in what should presumably be the final chapter of discoveries of novelties in this genus (1995-2005). Since two are Sumatran and one Bornean, one wonders what else is out there in the wilds of Malesia. YIKES!!
Peace,
SJ
I also have N. faizaliana from MT and it is nearly identical to the image of the plant that Tony posted (it is rather darker overall, almost certainly from outdoor culture). One of the things that I've noticed about this particular plant is that the pitchers are formed very, very slowly, but that they last forever. I have one 20 cm tall lower that is just starting to brown after a year. Much more than N. fusca, this sp. reminds me of some highly-colored N. stenophylla clones. Lovely, thick, shiny leaves, too.
My two cents on the issue of Nepenthes taxonomy: one of the very real problems with unusual "ornamental" plants of all kinds is that new descriptions are driven more by the desire of the horticultural trade to offer a bigger selection (more species = more potential sales), or the desire by amateur botanists to publish, than by the interests of comparative botany. In spite of this bias, most of the new carnivorous taxa being described these days appear to be "good". An additional aggravation is that collectors naturally gravitate to/take the "showier" examples in a given colony to serve as the type series, which may not necessarily best represent the whole of the population. As a further complication, species that are thinly-distributed in very remote regions often yield very few type specimens (sometimes, only the holotype!) to "first contact", and these individuals also may not represent the species in its totality. And finally, when dealing with the genus Nepenthes specifically, you have the added complications of intraspecific variability deriving from environmental factors (exposure, elevation, etc.), dramatic ontogenetic changes as the plant progresses from rosetted seedling to hemiepiphytic or epiphytic vine, and the genetic "pollution" from pollen imported into the deme from species that occur in sympatry.
I suspect that, as our knowledge grows and our understanding of the family improves, we may find that several "good" species that we grow today may either be sunk, or be found to represent particular, fairly stable forms within hybrid swarms.
As an aside, what I find to be an amazing coincidence is that the coveted "post-modern toilet bowl" Nepenthes types (jacquelinae, platychila, and Andreas Wistuba's newest sp. nov.) are all being described in what should presumably be the final chapter of discoveries of novelties in this genus (1995-2005). Since two are Sumatran and one Bornean, one wonders what else is out there in the wilds of Malesia. YIKES!!
Peace,
SJ