Bosch's Pitcher Plant

Nepenthes boschiana is a highland tropical pitcher plant endemic to the Meratus Mountains of South Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, where it grows in open, stunted forest on limestone hills. It is a variable and still poorly known species.

Nepenthes boschiana is a terrestrial shrub or climber up to about 5 m tall. Leaves of short stems are oblong, up to about 28 cm long and 10 cm wide, while those of climbing stems are lanceolate, 16 to 26 cm long.

Lower pitchers are 17 to 22 cm long, swollen in the lower half and narrower above, with two fringed wings. Upper pitchers are cylindrical to narrowly funnel-shaped, 15 to 30 cm (6 to 12 in) tall and 4 to 6 cm wide, with ridges in place of wings and a peristome up to 28 mm wide that is often wavy at its outer edge. The underside of the lid has a keel along the midrib. Pitchers are pale or yellowish green, splashed lightly to heavily with red to purple. The fruiting stalks can exceed 90 cm in length.

Cheek and Jebb describe it as polymorphic and still poorly known. They united N. borneensis with it, after Charles Clarke found plants with the features of both, and intermediates, in a single population. It belongs to the loosely defined N. maxima complex and seems closely related to N. stenophylla and N. faizaliana, with which it shares an affinity for limestone. No natural hybrids are known.

ເຂດເດີມ: Meratus Mountains, South Kalimantan, Borneo (endemic)

ເຂດດິນຟ້າອາກາດ: Tropical highland (780-1,880 m)

Nepenthes boschiana is known from three peaks of the Meratus range: Gunung Sakoembang, Gunung Sarempaka and Gunung Besar. It grows in open, stunted forest on limestone hills at 780 to 1,880 m. Its first collector, Pieter Korthals, described the habitat on Gunung Sakoembang as sterile, open and stony.

ຂະໜາດໃຫຍ່: Shrub or climber to about 5 m; upper pitchers 15-30 cm (6-12 in)

ອັດຕາການເຕີບໂຕ: Moderate

ປະເພດໃສ່ກັບດັກ: Pitfall Trap

The pitchers are pitfall traps. Nectar glands, about 0.2 to 0.4 mm across, are scattered over the underside of the lid, and in some plants the largest are concentrated in two arms spreading from the keel towards the tip of the lid. The peristome bears fine ribs and is toothed near the back of the mouth.

It is named after Johannes van den Bosch.
Korthals reported that local people used the water of unopened pitchers as a medicine for eye inflammation.
Children were given opened pitchers as playthings.
Its local name, 'daoen sompitan', translates as blow-pipe leaf.
N. borneensis, described in 1990 from Gunung Besar, is now treated as the same species.
The IUCN Red List lists it as Endangered, from a 2000 assessment (Schnell et al., assessment T40104A10314124).

Pieter Willem Korthals described Nepenthes boschiana in his 1839 monograph on the genus, Over het geslacht Nepenthes. Its lectotype was collected by Korthals in 1836 on Gunung Sakoembang at about 950 m. Later authors applied the name to other plants: Miquel included what is now N. sumatrana, Beccari placed it within N. maxima, and Hooker and Macfarlane included N. stenophylla. B. H. Danser restored it in its present sense in his 1928 monograph The Nepenthaceae of the Netherlands Indies, which also preserved Korthals's notes on its local uses.

1. Nepenthes boschiana, Wikipedia
2. Nepenthes boschiana, 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)