White-collared Pitcher Plant

Nepenthes albomarginata is a tropical pitcher plant of Borneo, Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra, named for the band of white hairs just below the rim of its pitchers. That band is edible bait for termites, making it the only carnivorous plant known to specialise in a single kind of prey.

Nepenthes albomarginata is a climbing plant with a stem up to about 4 m long, though Cheek and Jebb record plants to 10 m. Its narrow, leathery leaves have no leaf stalk at all. Young stems and leaves carry a dense, long, coppery red covering of hairs.

Lower pitchers are bulbous in the lower third and cylindrical above, only up to about 15 cm (6 in) tall and 4 cm wide, with a pair of fringed wings. The peristome is narrow, up to 2 mm wide. Directly below it runs a dense band of short white hairs, usually bright white but less often brown, which sets the species apart from all others. Upper pitchers are cylindrical to funnel-shaped, with ribs in place of wings. The common form is green, while rarer forms have red or blackish pitchers; a red form was named var. rubra in 1908.

It is sometimes confused with N. gracilis, which lacks the white band. Natural hybrids are recorded with many species, among them N. × cincta (with N. northiana) and N. × ferrugineomarginata (with N. reinwardtiana).

آبائی علاقہ: Borneo, Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra, including Penang and Nias

موسمیاتی زونز: Tropical, sea level to about 1,200 m

Its typical habitat is kerangas (heath) forest, but it also grows in submontane forest and on exposed ridge-tops and the summits of low peaks, on peat, limestone or sandstone. It ranges from sea level to about 1,100 to 1,200 m. It is absent from Singapore.

بالغ سائز: Climber to about 4 m; pitchers up to about 15 cm (6 in) tall

شرح نمو: Moderate

ٹریپ کی قسم: Pitfall Trap

Nepenthes albomarginata specialises in termites, unlike most Nepenthes, which take whatever they catch. Marlis Merbach and colleagues placed pitchers near foraging columns of the termite Hospitalitermes bicolor. The termites grazed on the living white hairs below the peristome, and many workers and soldiers fell in and could not climb out: up to 22 a minute in Merbach's counts. After about an hour the hairs were gone, the pitcher was no longer attractive, and it was full of termites. Merbach found no sign of scent attracting them from a distance; contacts seemed to happen by chance. This makes it the only plant known to offer its own tissue as bait, and pitchers that have caught termites typically lack their white band.

Albomarginata means 'white-margined', from Latin albus (white) and marginatus (bordered).
Its prey specialisation on termites is unique among carnivorous plants.
A single pitcher can fill with termites overnight, losing its white band in the process.
Its leaves have no stalk at all, a distinctive feature.
Green is the common form; red and blackish forms are rarer.
The IUCN Red List assessed it as Least Concern in 2018 (Clarke, assessment T39639A143958253).

Thomas Lobb first collected Nepenthes albomarginata in 1848, and John Lindley described it the following year in The Gardeners' Chronicle; the lectotype is the illustration published there. It was introduced into cultivation in the United Kingdom in 1856. Varieties were later named, including var. rubra (Macfarlane, 1908) for red plants. In the 1996 book Pitcher-Plants of Borneo it was given the English name white-collared pitcher-plant. Charles Clarke drew attention in 1997 to the possibility that it specialises in termites, which Merbach's field experiments demonstrated.

1. Nepenthes albomarginata, Wikipedia
2. Nepenthes albomarginata, Caryophyllales Network: Nepenthaceae (after Cheek & Jebb 2001, Flora Malesiana I, 15)
3. Nepenthes: species of Borneo, The Carnivorous Plant FAQ (Barry Rice)
4. Nepenthes: basic cultivation, The Carnivorous Plant FAQ (Barry Rice)
5. Nepenthes: advanced cultivation, The Carnivorous Plant FAQ (Barry Rice)
6. Thumbnail guidelines on growing a tropical pitcher plant, The Carnivorous Plant FAQ (Barry Rice)