Nepenthes lowii (), commonly called Low's pitcher plant,Phillipps, A. & A. Lamb 1996. Pitcher-Plants of Borneo. Natural History Publications (Borneo), Kota Kinabalu. is a tropical pitcher plant endemic to Borneo. It is named after Hugh Low, who discovered it on Mount Kinabalu. This species is perhaps the most unusual in the genus, being characterised by its strongly constricted upper pitchers, which bear a greatly reduced peristome and a reflexed lid with numerous bristles on its lower surface.Clarke, C.M. 1997. Nepenthes of Borneo. Natural History Publications (Borneo), Kota Kinabalu.
Botanical history
Discovery and naming Nepenthes lowii was discovered in March 1851 by British colonial administrator and naturalist Hugh Low during his first ascent of Mount Kinabalu. Low wrote the following account of his discovery:
A little way further we came upon a most extraordinary Nepenthes, of, I believe, a hitherto unknown form, the mouth being oval and large, the neck exceedingly contracted so as to appear funnel-shaped, and at right angles to the body of the pitcher, which was large, swollen out laterally, flattened above and sustained in an horizontal position by the strong prolongation of the midrib of the plant as in other species. It is a very strong growing kind and absolutely covered with its interesting pitchers, each of which contains little less than a pint of water and all of them were full to the brim, so admirably were they sustained by the supporting petiole. The plants were generally upwards of 40 ft long, but I could find no young ones nor any flowers, not even traces of either.
The type specimen of N. lowii, designated as Low s.n., was collected by Hugh Low on Mount Kinabalu and is deposited at the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (K).Schlauer, J. N.d. Nepenthes lowii . Carnivorous Plant Database.
Nepenthes lowii was formally described in 1859 by Joseph Dalton Hooker. Hooker's original description and illustration were reproduced in Spenser St. John's Life in the Forests of the Far East, published in 1862.St. John, S. 1862. Life in the Forests of the Far East; or, Travels in northern Borneo. 2 volumes. Smith, Elder & Co., London. St. John wrote the following account of N. lowii on Mount Kinabalu:
We soon came upon the magnificent pitcher-plant, the Nepenthes Lowii, which Mr. Low was anxious to obtain. We could find no young plants, but took cuttings, which the natives said would grow. [...] We at last reached a narrow, rocky ridge, covered with brushwood, but with thousands of plants of the beautiful Nepenthes Lowii growing among them. [...] We sent our men on next morning to wait for us at the cave, while we stayed behind to collect specimens of the Nepenthes Lowii and the Nepenthes Villosa. The former is, in my opinion, the loveliest of them all, and its shape is most elegant. [...] The outside colour of the pitchers is a bright pea-green, the inside dark mahogany; the lid is green, while the glandular are mahogany-coloured. A very elegant claret jug might be made of this shape.
In subsequent years, N. lowii was featured in a number of publications by eminent botanists, such as Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel (1870),Miquel, F.A.G. 1870. Nepenthes. Illustrations de la flore l'Archipel Indien 1: 1–48. Joseph Dalton Hooker (1873), Hooker, J.D. 1873. Ordo CLXXV bis. Nepenthaceæ. In: A. de Candolle Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 17: 90–105. Frederick William Burbidge (1882),Burbidge, F.W. 1882. Notes on the new Nepenthes. The Gardeners' Chronicle, new series, 17(420): 56. Odoardo Beccari (1886),Beccari, O. 1886. Rivista delle specie del genere Nepenthes. Malesia 3: 1–15. Ernst Wunschmann (1891),Wunschmann, E. 1891. Nepenthaceae. In: A. Engler & K. Prantl. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3(2): 253–260. Otto Stapf (1894),Stapf, O. 1894. On the flora of Mount Kinabalu, in North Borneo. The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 4: 96–263. Harry James Veitch (1897),Veitch, H.J. 1897. Nepenthes. Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society 21(2): 226–255. Jacob Gijsbert Boerlage (1900),Boerlage, J.G. 1900. Nepenthes. In: Handleiding tot de kennis der flora van Nederlandsch Indië, Volume 3, Part 1. pp. 53–54. and Elmer Drew Merrill (1921).Merrill, E.D. 1921. A bibliographic enumeration of Bornean plants. Journal of the Straits branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, special number. pp. 281–295. However, most of these publications made only passing mention of N. lowii. The first major taxonomic treatment was that of Günther Beck von Mannagetta und Lerchenau in 1895, who placed N. lowii in its own subgroup (Retiferae) on account of its unusual pitcher morphology. Beck, G. 1895. Die Gattung Nepenthes. Wiener Illustrirte Garten-Zeitung 20(3–6): 96–107, 141–150, 182–192, 217–229.
A revised description and illustration of N. lowii were published in John Muirhead Macfarlane's 1908 monograph, "Nepenthaceae".Macfarlane, J.M. 1908. Nepenthaceae. In: A. Engler. Das Pflanzenreich IV, III, Heft 36: 1–91. Macfarlane also wrote about N. lowii in the Journal of the Linnean Society in 1914Macfarlane, J.M. 1914. Nepenthaceae. In: L.S. Gibbs. A contribution to the flora and the plant formations of Mount Kinabalu and the Highlands of British North Borneo. Journal of the Linnean Society 42: 125–127. and The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture in 1919.Macfarlane, J.M. 1919. Nepenthes. In: L.H. Bailey. The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, Volume 4. pp. 2122–2130.
In 1927, a new illustration of N. lowii was published in an article by Dutch botanist B. H. Danser in the journal De Tropische Natuur.Danser, B.H. 1927. Indische bekerplanten. De Tropische Natuur 16: 197–205. The following year Danser provided a further emended Latin diagnosis and botanical description of N. lowii in his seminal monograph "The Nepenthaceae of the Netherlands Indies".Danser, B.H. 1928. The Nepenthaceae of the Netherlands Indies. Bulletin du Jardin Botanique de Buitenzorg, Série III, 9(3–4): 249–438.
New localities
Nepenthes lowii was discovered on Mount Kinabalu and later found on Bukit Batu Lawi. It was first recorded from Mount Murud by Eric Mjöberg during his first ascent of the mountain in 1922.Mjöberg, E. 1925. An Expedition to the Kalabit Country and Mt. Murud, Sarawak. Geographical Review 15(3): 411–427. Mjöberg wrote the following account of the Mount Murud summit area:Beaman, J.H. 1999. ASEAN Review of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation: 1–23.
We found ourselves in a strange landscape where low bushes with thick leathery leaves constituted the predominating vegetation. Here and there smaller trees were seen, among them a conifer with trunk and larger branches practically covered with the yellow blossoms of a small, richly flowering, epiphytic orchid. Bright scarlet or snow-white flowers of rhododendron and similar plants were met with everywhere; and most noticeable were the enormous and characteristically shaped pitchers of Nepenthes lowii, hitherto recorded only from Kinabalu and Batu Lawi.
During the expedition, Mjöberg collected a single specimen of N. lowii from Mount Murud, which has been designated as Mjöberg 115. In 1926, Mjöberg found N. lowii on the north-eastern slope of Bukit Batu Tiban, although he did not collect any specimens.
Another specimen, Beaman 11476, was collected by John H. Beaman between April 10 and April 17, 1995, from the summit ridge of Mount Murud at an elevation of between 2,300 and 2,400 m above sea level. This latter specimen was collected as part of the eighth botanical expedition to Mount Murud since Eric Mjöberg's first ascent in 1922.
Misidentification Despite its unique pitcher morphology, N. lowii has been misidentified at least once in the literature; Bertram Evelyn Smythies tentatively assigned a specimen of N. lowii to N. macfarlanei, a species endemic to Peninsular Malaysia, although he suggested it might represent a new species. This misidentification was published in 1965, in the proceedings of the UNESCO Humid Tropics Symposium, which was held in Kuching two years earlier. It was based on a specimen collected by Iris Sheila Darnton Collenette from the Mesilau East River in July 1963.van Steenis-Kruseman, M.J., et al. 2006. Cyclopaedia of Malesian Collectors: Iris Sheila Darnton Collenette. Nationaal Herbarium Nederland. This plant bore several pitchers, each with a well-developed peristome and long bristles on the underside of the lid. The confusion resulted from the fact that the peristome in upper pitchers of N. lowii is usually present only as a series of ridges and that N. macfarlanei also has bristles on the underside of the lid (although they are much shorter than those of N. lowii). Having studied all the Bornean Nepenthes herbarium material held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Smythies would later confirm that records of N. macfarlanei from the Kinabalu area were erroneous.Corner, E.J.H. 1996. Pitcher-plants (Nepenthes). In: K.M. Wong & A. Phillipps (eds.) Kinabalu: Summit of Borneo. A Revised and Expanded Edition. The Sabah Society, Kota Kinabalu. pp. 115–121. .
Description
Stem and leaves Nepenthes lowii is a climbing plant. The stem may attain a length of more than 10 m and is up to 20 mm in diameter. Internodes are cylindrical in cross section and up to 8 cm long.
The leaves of this species are coriaceous in texture. The lamina or leaf blade is petiolate, oblong-lanceolate in shape, and up to 30 cm long by 9 cm wide.Kurata, S. 1976. Nepenthes of Mount Kinabalu. Sabah National Parks Publications No. 2, Sabah National Parks Trustees, Kota Kinabalu. It has a rounded apex and an abruptly contracted base. The petiole is canaliculate and up to 14 cm long. It forms a flat sheath that clasps the stem for two-thirds to four-fifths of its circumference. Three to four longitudinal veins are present on either side of the midrib. Pinnate veins run straight or obliquely with respect to the lamina. Tendrils are up to 20 cm long and are not usually curled.
Pitchers The rosette and lower pitchers are bulbous in the lower part and ventricose in the middle, becoming wider towards the mouth. They are smaller than their aerial counterparts, reaching only 10 cm high by 4 cm wide. Lower pitchers are rarely seen, as the plant quickly enters the climbing stage. A pair of fringed wings runs down the front of each pitcher, although these are often reduced and only present in the upper portion of the pitcher cup. The peristome is cylindrical in cross section and widens towards the rear. It is up to 12 mm wide and bears prominent teeth and ribs. The inner portion of the peristome accounts for around 62% of its total cross-sectional surface length.Bauer, U., C.J. Clemente, T. Renner & W. Federle 2012. Form follows function: morphological diversification and alternative trapping strategies in carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 25(1): 90–102. On the inner surface, the glandular region covers the basal half of the pitcher; the waxy zone is reduced. The pitcher lid or operculum is approximately orbiculate in shape. On its underside it possesses a number of very dense fleshy bristles measuring up to 2 cm in length. Other than these distinctive structures, the lid has no appendages. An unbranched spur is inserted near the base of the lid.