Nepenthes 'elegance'

[Tom]

Hi,

an question came to my mind when I opened my old Slack's book Carnivorous plants: how to grow them?. In the lowland section, there is a spectacular picture of a purple pitchered plants designed as Nepenthes 'elegance', but it is said to have no 'official' status when it was in print... Do anyone know what happened to this plant and under which name it can be found now?

Thanks!

 

[neps]

I believe that this is now identifed as a variety of N. rafflesiana.

 

[goldtrap2690]

Thats a very old book and most of the cultivars in their are old names or are no longer in cultivation , fro example , S. x excellens ' Loch Ness '

 

[Trent]

Hi All,
I believe N. 'elegance' was originally found by Rob Cantley, and would today be considered N. rafflesiana elongata. I don't know if the plant was a single clone or not-maybe Rob can someday shed some light on this plant. Clyde Bramblett in Miami had a plant that was nearly identical -maybe the same thing- and he said he got it from Rob many years ago. Clyde claims it is mirabilis x rafflesiana-a natural hybrid, and produces large, dark pitchers virtually identical to the plant pictured in Slack. We have a cutting of it starting to put on some size now and has already produced a pretty nice trap for spring. When the plant gets up in size we plan to compare it in detail with the picture in Slack's book.
Nepenthes are so mysterious!

Trent
Boca Raton, Florida

 

[Borneo]

Trent, you're pretty much correct. In the Labi district of Brunei there are all sorts of varieties of N. rafflesiana. In that district there are no N. rafflesiana that can be described as typical, they all have elongate pitchers or giant pitchers or sometimes giant elongate pitchers. In the 1980's I coined the terms 'var. elongata' and 'var. gigantea' to differentiate between them. Adrian picked a particularly colorful specimen of a N. rafflesiana var. elongata that I had sent him and put it into his book calling it 'elegance'.

However, all the N. mirabilis growing around there are of the echinostoma variety and the hybrid is very distinctive (we have it here, I can take a photo if you like) but it's not 'elegance'. However, I wouldn't rule out 'elegance' being a complex hybrid. N.N. gracilis, bicalcarata, ampullaria and other species all grow right together with the N. rafflesiana forms and all sorts of obvious hybrids occur there.

 

[Trent]

Thanks Rob. What we have is definitely not an echinostoma hybrid. Whatever we got from Clyde (raff x mirabilis -natural hybrid) is beautiful. Again, he claims he got it from you. The mature pitchers can be very elegantly shaped and heavily marked with a purple brown on a cream white background-almost solid brown-purple. I know this goes back more than a decade, but if you recall any details about this plant, I'd love to know...

Trent
Boca Raton, Florida