CARNIVOROUS PLANTS IN THE WILD

My fascination for carnivorous plants started around 6 years ago when I came across a documentary about these incredible plants. I was immediately captivated by the extraordinary array of shapes and colours, along with all the different trapping mechanisms that these plants developed through millions of years of evolution. Living in very nutrient poor soils, these plants evolved their structures to capture insects and other small prays, slowly digest them through enzymes and use their nutrients as food.
It is still a mystery to me how a plant could develop its leaves to form such complex shapes and create such stunning traps that look like proper pieces of art.
During my first trip to South East Asia I had the luck to see some of these incredible plants in the wild. This really developed my passion for the tropical carnivorous plants, commonly known as Nepenthes. This genus is famous for the stunning pitchers hanging from the leaves that these plants developed to attract and catch pray. Their strategy involves the use of colours, tiny ladders, sweet nectars and very slippery surfaces that make the pray fall into the pitchers and drown into their digestive fluids. These plants are able to grow incredibly tall and frequently climb up the trees for several meters. It is also fascinating that they can live for decades, creating very often huge traps that can easily leave you speechless. Some of them can be found only on the top of one particular mountain, others are more accessible and found even next to the road. They come in all sort of shapes and colourations, some have sharp teeth, others are more simple but still beautifully elegant.
Reaching them often requires several days of hard trekking through hostile jungles, but the feeling of excitement then you find them and the challenge of climbing those mountains are well worth the efforts.
In this gallery you will find many species that I observed in their natural habitat, mostly in Malaysian Borneo.