#stgaya

Nepenthes are carnivorous plants under the order of Caryophyllales, making them loosely related to cacti and carnations, but also the other common carnivorous plants like Venus fly traps and sundews. There are many other plants that have learned to eat insects that aren’t related though. When this happens, we call the process convergent evolution. Two different species, with the same selective pressures, ended up evolving similar systems to overcome those pressures. Think of bats and birds and bees all evolving wings to fly, even though none of them “Evolved” from another, it all happened independently to accomplish the same means.

So it is with plants as well, when the right conditions were met, in this case, low levels of fertilizer in the soil combined with a high concentration of small insect species, time and time again, plants will eventually feed on bugs to make up for what the soils have deprived them of.

They want blood.

To grow any of these “Tropical” plants here in the high desert has been nothing shrot of a chore until I really started to get the picture, and after that, this thing has been growing nonstop since 2021. Let me give you a little background first, though.

In the early 2010s I lived briefly in Texas, near San Antonio. The weather there was hot and humid and on my free time I went to a local nursery and purchased my first Nepenthes. It was a special plant, and still is, this specific variety was called “Nepenthes glandulifera” and it was very expensive. I had it outdoors, in what I thought were perfect conditions, and it didn’t last more than two weeks. I never took any pictures of it, but it was a real shame that I had killed such a perfect specimen of the like.

I didn’t try my hand at them again for years until I found a “Nepenthese st. gaya” at another local nursery here in the Reno area. It was already not doing so well, it didn’t even have any actively growing pitcher traps. I asked for a deal, and they sold me the miserable plant for only 18$USD. That’s a fraction of the price that I got the first one for, but I guess “St. gaya” is much less valuable than “glandulifera”. This is probably because this one is supposedly easier to grow.

This is a picture of it from 2021, a lonely plant in a marked down discount isle. It was doomed to fail, in a few more weeks its annual traps would be withered and gone, and then it would just be an ugly leafy houseplant hopelessly sitting on a discount rack until its eventual expiration. I felt like I might as well kill it at my house in the slight chance that it would survive in a kitchen window.

I kept the plant hanging on my kitchen pot rack next to my north facing window. The plant does get about an hour of east facing sunlight from the window on the opposite side of the room, and for the rest of the day, it’s very well lit. Over the year it grew new growth, but the traps dried up and died before they fully formed. Leaving basically a full year of an ugly plant getting larger, but uglier. I never changed its position or rotated it, except for when it was watered about every 10 days or so.

Finally in 2023 I was rewarded with my first flush of pitcher traps.

The Trap itself is actually a highly specialized end of the plants leaf. The whole leaf, all the way to the trap, is one continuous leaf structure. I think it had to acclimate to its new home and watering schedule before it was time to shine, but sure enough now was it’s time.

These days the traps come out mostly red or yellow, some of them with varying amounts of “fir” for lack of a better word. The spots and color patterns are thought to disorient flying insects that bumble into the pitcher. I think I’ve read before that it has something to do with their compound eyes not being able to see the correct exit. Either way, the bugs either slip down the side, or fly down into it, trying to reach a sort of nectar the traps produce to lure them in.

They do a good job too; the traps are often seen with a moth or fly floating in the enzymes at the bottom called phytotelmata. When the inhabitant dies of exhaustion the liquid at the bottom breaks it down and that serves as these plants form of nutrients.

In fact, some pitchers eat leaf mulch instead, and some eat animal poop. Some species of nepenthes even have a livable internal pool and survive off the microbiome that survives inside, containing a multitude of species in itself.

Now in 2026 the plant is thriving. It has never changed location or been rotated. It’s never been repotted, the roots serve as more of an anchor anyways. Sometimes I will put one drop of liquid houseplant fertilizer into the traps.

The traps get bigger every year.

This nepenthes is almost 6 feet long(tall?).

A close up of the rim (peristome). My hope is that in the next year or so it will flower. Remember, these traps are all parts of the leaf. The actual flower will resemble a dianthus and will grow tall, and far away from the traps to hopefully not kill the very pollinators they depend on.