Dave Evans

Umm... Could be. You just say it the way its spelled with Latin pronunciations. You don't use English because it is a misfit. I simply do not pronounce the second "ee". So I say "Nepenthes lowy" I have no idea why they do this weird thing.

Yes, each species makes their own adjustments and so the heterosis will cover, in theory, a wider range of conditions than either parent species might.

I don't know, how is the soil moisture?

Best Composition, ever:

It grows on damp limestone rock in the wild. Not the easiest of conditions to replicate. The soil is non-peaty even though there is some decaying vegetation on the surface.

Ahh, no. Sometimes cultivars are available unlabeled. Happens all the time actually. Since they are distinctive, yes you can ID them. This one is not a cultivar and has a typical wild or seed grown appearance. CP's are awesome, eh? Even the most common varieties are visually stunning!

Not sure how well the flora has been studied, if you look, you might find new species!

Please explain how an "ultra lowland" species can be restricted to hills? In order to be a "lowlander", it has to be from the lowlands, not an area physically above the surrounding lowlands... It is difficult because people keep trying to grow it like N. rafflesiana or N. ampullaria, which is kind of dumb if you think about it as those species are from Kerangas forest, not foggy limestone hills. People have trouble with N. clipeata (800 meters) and N. northiana (400 - 600 meters) for the same exact reason. Both species are intermediates which want less water in the soil than do lowland species. Treating either species like a lowlander long term will eventually cause rotting with the whole plant dying from the bottom up. The difference between them is N. northiana doesn't like bright light and tends to be under other vegetation.

N. northiana is not an ultra lowllander, it is an intermediate species like N. clipeata. The limestone endemic "ultra lowlander" you're thinking of is N. campanulata.

Most Drosera have a lot of undifferentiated cells in their leaves and can potentially grow foliar embryos from those cells. In species that are known not to strike cuttings, I believe we just haven't found a good method yet.

Nepenthes divided out from a group of plants which have perfect flowers, dividing into male and female was very likely one of the mutations that lead directly to the evolution our current Nepenthes. All other related genera have perfect flowers so it makes sense to assume this is a rather recent development. It is thought this happened when two different kinds of barely compatible species hybridized, but incompletely, dividing the resulting species into either male or female individuals while doubling the number of chromosomes. I believe this allowed Nepenthes to evolve faster as now fewer individuals can hold more genetic diversity as compared to individuals of Drosera, Dionaea, Aldrovanda.

Manders, if all the rubbish talangensis are from the same TC batch, perhaps they all have the same exact infectious disease? Just because they got the disease in TC or soon after leaving TC doesn't mean TC is the cause of the condition... That plant really does look messed up.

The genetics might jus be "loose". This happens to plants in horticulture. Mutations in the genetic controls in the DNA change the way coded genes behave/interact and the timing of when genes turn on and off. Some Nepenthes species might simply have "looser control" over their own genetics.

Maybe you don't want what ever that is in your compost..