Quote:
Originally Posted by caseyhoo
I thought N. rajah is the biggest?
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I thought so too and I agree with you casey... N. rajah is generally known to have one of the largest pitchers in the genus. It's pitchers could be bigger than a football. In the wild some pitchers contain 4 litres of pitcher fluid in them.
However, there are also other species with huge pitchers such as merrilliana, truncata, rafflesiana, bicalcarata, etc. but truncata is not the largest nepenthes in the world. Perhaps its because its pitchers are slender and more elongated. No doubt there are a few unofficial or informal reports that truncata is possibly the King of all Nepenthes. However, it does not mean it produce the largest picthers. It is base on other criteria of judging the pitcher.
It also depends alot on how the plants are cultivated. When they are cultivated well, they produce enormous pitchers. Officially, N. rajah is known to have the largest pitchers. Having said this we should not attempt to classify which species produce the largest pitchers as different plant cultivated differently will produce different results.
Generally, species like N. rajah, N. merrilliana, N. truncata, N. rafflesiana, N. bicalcarata or maybe hybrids like N. x alisaputrana, etc produce gigantic pitchers.