Nepenthes mira

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Nepenthes mira

Description

Terrestrial climber to 3 m tall. Leaves chartaceous, petiolate; Inflorescences with unpleasant smell. Flowers opening green, turning dark red. Fruit and seed unknown.

Distribution

Asia-Tropical: Philippines (Philippines present), Palawan present
Philippines: Palawan.

Ecology

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Taxonomy

3. The earliest reference to N. mira may be that by at the end of his protologue for N. graciliflora (a synonym of N. alata), where he wrote: “recently the writer observed a large sterile species on Mount Pulgar of Palawan. Some of its pitchers were a foot long and six inches thick!” 1 Nepenthes mira falls within the N. villosa group, comprising four species, of which the remaining three are all found in Sabah, Borneo. These species are robust plants with stout stems reaching the 1-2 cm diameter range, with a villose indumentum that is usually caducous. The leaves are large, with well-defined, winged petioles. The pitchers are large (10 cm diam. or more in most specimens of all species), with unusual papery ribs 1-5 mm high, that are not reduced and indeed, are sometimes exaggerated, on the stout column. The pitcher lids lack appendages and the inflorescences are densely covered in coppery red hairs. Although N. mira has all these characters, it is unusual in occurring below 2000 m altitude, in having both upper and lower pitchers commonly expressed (in the other species, only one or the other are usually found), in the lower pitchers having lids only about half as long as the mouths and in possessing constantly 2-flowered partial peduncles. 2. ‘Nepenthes spec. Philippines II’ of Rischer & Nerz (URL: http://joachim-nerz.de/ (02 May 2012 10:35 (2012)), represented by four pictures, with captions, taken in habitat, appears to fall within N. mira. Photographed in moss forest, it appears to differ from N. mira only in the lower pitcher having a less prominently toothed peristome column and in the pitcher wings running from peristome to tendril. These differences seem compatible with infraspecific variation. However, their photographs of ‘Nepenthes spec. Philippines I’ (l.c.) depicts non-climbing, shrubby plants in a grassland habitat and differ more significantly from the material available to us of N. mira in the smaller leaves with less conspicuous petioles and in the pitcher wings running from peristome to tendril. In some respects their ‘spec. Philippines I’ approaches the description of the mysterious N. deaniana (see ‘Little Known Species’, p. 156). However, it might also represent a variant of N. mira. Without specimens it is difficult to reach a firm conclusion.

Citation

Jebb & Cheek 1999: p. 891. – In: Kew Bull.: f. 893