Nepenthes lowii (), commonly called Low's pitcher plant, 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.
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). Nepenthes lowii was formally described[note a] 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 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), Joseph Dalton Hooker (1873), Frederick William Burbidge (1882), Odoardo Beccari (1886), Ernst Wunschmann (1891), Otto Stapf (1894), Harry James Veitch (1897), Jacob Gijsbert Boerlage (1900), and Elmer Drew Merrill (1921). 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. A revised description and illustration of N. lowii were published in John Muirhead Macfarlane's 1908 monograph, "Nepenthaceae". Macfarlane also wrote about N. lowii in the Journal of the Linnean Society in 1914 and The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture in 1919. 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. The following year Danser provided a further emended Latin diagnosis[note b] and botanical description of N. lowii in his seminal monograph "The Nepenthaceae of the Netherlands Indies".
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 wrote the following account of the Mount Murud summit area:
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. 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.
Description
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