New England Carnivorous Plant Society

Entry#	Place	    Plant	                      Name 	          Genus

100  	First	Brocchinia reducta	         Matthew Opel	        Brocchinia
96	First	Byblis liniflora	         Matthew Opel	        Byblis
108	First	Dionaea muscipula 'B-52'	 Jeffrey Matteson	Dionaea
3	Second	Dionaea muscipula	         Ken Matteson	        Dionaea
75	First	Genlisea lobata x violacea 	 Emmi Kurosawa	        Genlisea
95	Second	Genlisea hispidula	         Matthew Opel	        Genlisea
88	First	Sarracenia purpurea	         Eduardo Stiffler       Sarracenia
63	Second	Sarracenia x purpurea            Steve Branchaud
    'Alderman Lake Bog MI' x Brunswick Beauty		                Sarracenia
17	First	Drosophyllum  Lusitanicum	 Donald Gallant     	Drosophyllum
101	Second	Drosophyllum lusitanicum	 Matthew Opel	        Drosophyllum
118	First	Heliamphora  heterodoxa	         Jeffrey Matteson	Heliamphora
88	First	Sarracenia purpurea	         Eduardo Stiffler	My Favorite
53	Second	Carnivorous plant mix          	 Steve Branchaud	My Favorite
103	First	Nepenthes  The Succubus'	 Jeffrey Matteson	Nepenthes
46	Second	Nepenthes x 'Marbled Dragon'	 David Schloat	        Nepenthes
5	Second	Nepenthes robcantleyi	         Ken Matteson	        Nepenthes
47	Second	Nepenthes maxima	         David Schloat	        Nepenthes
80	First	Aldrovanda vesiculosa vesiculosa Emmi Kurosawa	        Aldrovanda
102	Second	Aldrovanda vesiculosa	         Matthew Opel	        Aldrovanda
86	Second	Drosera filiformis	         Mike Stiffler	        Aldrovanda
79	First	Utricularia alpina	         Emmi Kurosawa	        Utricularia
73	Second	Utricularia of New England	 Emmi Kurosawa	        Utricularia
117	First	Drosera tracyi 	                 Jeffrey Matteson	Drosera
78	Second	Dorseara filliformis ssp tracyii Emmi Kurosawa	        Drosera
72	Third	Drosera capensis	         Emmi Kurosawa	        Drosera
126	Third	Drosera 	                 Shaun Montminy	        Drosera
21	Third	Drosera binata var. binata	 Donald Gallant	        Drosera
92	Third	Drosera callistos	         Matthew Opel	        Drosera
77	First	Pinguicula ssp	                 Emmi Kurosawa	        Pinguicula
6	Second	Pinguicula cylcosecta	         Ken Matteson	        Pinguicula
76	Third	Pinguicula x Titan	         Emmi Kurosawa	        Pinguicula

                             Cobra Lily Challenge 
							 
37	First	Darlingtonia californica	 David Schloat	        Darlingtonia
87	Second	Darlingtonia californica	 Mike Stiffler	        Darlingtonia
1	Third	Darlingtonia  californica	 Margie Matteson	Darlingtonia
22	Third	Darlingtonia california	         Donald Gallant	        Darlingtonia
	

After a six-hour ride over increasingly treacherous roads, it took a full day's hike up almost 3,000 feet for Leonora Bittleston to reach Nepenthes Camp in the Maliau Basin, an elevated conservation area in Malaysian Borneo with a rich, isolated rainforest ecosystem.

After waiting three years for collecting permits, Bittleston, then a graduate student at Harvard University, entered the basin in search of one thing: pitcher plants. These carnivorous plants have evolved traps to lure, drown and digest animal prey to supplement nutrient-poor soils.

Bittleston needed samples of the liquid inside the pitchers to compare to pitcher plants from much closer to home in Massachusetts and along the Gulf Coast. Though unrelated, both plant families had converged on similar adaptations for trapping prey, and Bittleston wanted to know if the communities of microbes and small animals housed in each liquid-filled pitcher were as similar as the traps themselves.

In new research published Aug. 28 in the journal eLife, Bittleston, University of Wisconsin-Madison botany and bacteriology professor Anne Pringle, and others, reveal that the communities created inside pitcher plants converge just as the shape and function of the plants themselves do. Despite being separated by continents and oceans, pitchers tend to house living communities more similar to one another than they are to their surrounding environments.

Asian pitchers transplanted to Massachusetts bogs can even mimic the natives so well that the pitcher plant mosquito-a specialized insect that evolved to complete its life cycle exclusively in North American pitchers-lays eggs in the impostors.

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The New York Times: A species of pitcher plant found in Singapore isn't very good at dissolving the prey it catches, but it gets nutritional help from worm larvae that live and eat within its maws.

On the soggy floor of one of the only remaining intact forests on the island nation of Singapore, the egg-sized heads of carnivorous creatures emerge from decaying leaves. They appear to be belching, or singing, or screaming out the catch phrase of their cousin in Hollywood - "Feed me Seymour."

This is Nepenthes ampullaria, an unusual pitcher plant found on the islands of Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula. And its "Seymour" is the worm larva of Xenoplatyura beaveri, a species of fungus gnat that develops inside the plant's mouth. When grown, it looks like a mosquito with big biceps.

They've got a strange relationship, these two.

The plant gives the gnat baby a safe place to eat and develop. In exchange, the baby builds a web across the plant's lips, captures and eats other insects and then defecates into its maw, or pitcher. The plant eats the ammonium-rich droppings. And all is well in this miniature world of weird.

It's not romantic. It's not sweet. But researchers call this relationship "mutualistic" in a study published Wednesday in Biology Letters. Their findings, based on laboratory experiments that simulated this insect-plant interaction in the wild, suggest that cohabitation may have its benefits for these two obscure organisms. How tiny pitcher plant communities like this one and others the group is studying function may reveal secrets of plant and insect life, said Weng Ngai Lam, a graduate student in botany at the National University of Singapore, who led the research.

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