Nepenthes: Life Cycle

Summary: How do Nepenthes become big strong plants? Join Kiersten as she walks through the stages of Nepenthes life cycle.

 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

 

Show Notes:

Nepenthes. Wikipedia (This page is well referenced).

”Pitcher Plant: Tropical Pitcher Plants-Nepenthes sp.” The North Creek Wetland, https://www.uwb.edu

Tropical Pitcher Plant-Nepenthes. Carnivorous Plant Resource. https://www.carnivorousplantresourcs.com

Nepenthes Phylogeny, International Carnivorous Plant Society. https://www.carnivorousplants.org

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

 

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

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Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

The eighth episode of Unbelievable Unknown Plants is also the third episode of Nepenthes and the third thing I like about this supercool plant is its life cycle.

Now, I’m sure you remember the unusual life cycle of Rafflesia from previous episodes, boy that was a fun episode. Nepenthes is not quite as unusual, but it it still exciting. No laughing, this really is exciting.

It all starts with a meet-cute. A male Nepenthes meets a female Nepenthes, they fall in love, get married, have babies, and live happily ever after. No not really, but Nepenthes are dioecious which means individual plants are either male or female. Mature plants do start off as seeds, unlike Rafflesia they do not rely on a host plant to harbor them until they are ready to bloom. Nepenthes are more like traditional plants that rely on seeds germinating in soil to grow. 

They cannot pollinate themselves, so how do they create seeds? They must rely on a pollinator to get the whole reproduction thing started. Once the plant has matured, flowers will bloom. Both sexes produce flowers. Male’s flowers will produce pollen, while the female’s flowers will have carpels, the reproductive structure. The flowers will grow on a long spike. Several flowers will grow on one spike. The flower spikes are completely different structures from the pitchers that these plants are so well known for.

Pollen needs to get inside the carpel for the reproductive cycle to begin. Nepenthes rely on insects to do the pollinating, but as we discussed with Rafflesia the competition for insect pollinators is fierce, so Nepenthes has targeted non-typical insects to do their bidding. They give off a not-so-sweet smell to attract insects such as blow flies, midges, male mosquitos, and wasps; while also attracting more typical pollinators such as moths and butterflies. 

Before you start scratching your head and wondering how the insects survive a visit to a pitcher plant that eats insects, remember the flowers and the pitchers are two different parts of the Nepenthes plant. The pollinators are not attracted to the pitcher trap they are only attracted to the flowers, so they are safe to drink from the flowers and pick up and deposit pollen without getting eaten. 

Once the female flowers have been pollinated, a four-sided capsule will develop. Inside this capsule is 50 to 500 seeds. The seeds are light in weight with an embryo in the middle and two wings, one on each side. The seeds are distributed by the wind, so the low weight and wings help the seeds travel further away. Hopefully those seeds will settle in appropriate soil to begin the reproductive process all over again.

When they do, the seeds will sprout developing a shallow root system and a climbing stem that can reach several meters long. Along the stems alternate leaves will sprout. These leaves will become the pitchers. A tendril will extend past the end of the leaf at the midrib. This tendril will swell and droop eventually becoming the pitcher.

Most Nepenthes produce two types of pitchers, “lower pitchers” that grow near the ground and “upper pitchers” that grow higher on the plants. The lower pitchers are usually larger and may actually sit on the ground. The upper pitchers also called aerial pitchers are usually smaller and may be a differ color than the lower pitchers. These two types of pitchers can posses different features meaning one plant may have two different types of pitchers. The upper pitchers generally develop as the plant matures and will often create loops in the vine so the plant can hold onto something to help stabilize it.

This is an incredibly cool adaptation, I mean mind-blowingly cool, but it can make identifying species difficult. 

As the pitchers are growing they are developing a hatch on the top of the pitcher. When the pitcher is ready to attract and trap prey, the top pops open and the pitcher will emanate a scent that attracts targeted prey items. The two different types of pitchers that one plant produces often attract different types of prey. That is genius!

I guess the last question about the life cycle of Nepenthes is how long do they live? We don’t have a perfect answer for this yet, but it appears that they can live indefinitely. If they have the right habitat, food resources, and water, they can live forever. That doesn't mean that every Nepenthes plant will live forever. In the wild, they are battling habitat loss, food depletion, broad spectrum herbicide use, and poaching which all impacts their potential life span.  

It also doesn’t mean if you run out and buy one from the store that it will live forever. I know the ones that I brought into my house lasted maybe a year, but I was a novice at caring for them and bought them on a whim. People more knowledgeable than I can encourage them to live a long an healthy life in a home but you have to put some blood, sweat, and tears into it. 

Thanks for joining me for the third episode of Nepenthes because my third favorite thing about them is their life cycle.

 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform you’re listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about Nepenthes.    

 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.