Nepenthes northiana
Description
Terrestrial shrub or climber, 1-4 m tall.
Leaves coriaceous, sessile to weakly petiolate;
Fruits with valves 25-28 by 3.5-4 mm.
Seeds fili-form, 8 by 0.3 mm (probably immature).
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Borneo present (Sarawak present), Bau present
Borneo: Sarawak (near Bau).
Taxonomy
2. Nepenthes decurrens, based on a specimen with only upper pitchers, was possibly described because, at that time, the only specimens of N. northiana available to Macfarlane had lower pitchers. Nepenthes northiana is only known from the Bau region near Kuching, whereas the type of N. decurrens was said to have been collected at Baram. If the Baram referred to is the Baram River, some 500 km to the north-east, it seems astonishing the species has not been recollected there or found in the other limestone areas in between. Hewitt’s numbering system provides no positive clue, but it is of note that a specimen of Trevesia burckii Boerl. (Araliaceae) at K also bears the number Hewitt 100, and was collected on Mt Poi near Kuching.
3. Beck based his N. spuria on part of Hooker’s original protologue of N. northiana. He regarded the English text and f. 144 to represent a separate species. There seems no justification for this.
4. This species came to the attention of the world through a painting by Marianne North. When this was seen by the nurseryman Harry Veitch, he arranged for his collector Charles Curtis to obtain the plant for his London nurseries from whence Hooker described it from live plants and dried pitchers.
1 Nepenthes northiana is restricted to limestone in a small area of Sarawak. It is not likely to be confused with any other species in Sarawak on account of the very large, ovoid, recumbent lower pitchers with a broad, sinuate peristome protected by a narrowly elliptic lid. Nepenthes mapulensis, which occurs also on limestone, on the opposite side of Borneo, shares these characters, but is immediately distinguished by its terete, puberulent, flexuose stems which lack the unusual saddle-shaped ridges seen on the short stems of N. northiana.
5. Plants of this species growing in open rocky places will flower freely as non-climbing shrubs, lacking upper pitchers. However, in lightly wooded areas, upper pitchers, as well as lower, are abundantly produced (pers. obs.).