Nepenthes rajah x burbidgeae BE 3931 or N. x ‘alisputrana’

From Borneo Exotics:

Introduced July 2018. This fabulous natural hybrid was first available as ‘all different individuals from seed’ under BE-3865 in Jan 2018 and immediately sold out. At the time of writing (July 2018) the first plants originating from microprop are becoming available. These are from such a large number of clones, that the chances are high that all plants in any nursery batch will be different individuals from each other.

The natural hybrid was discovered in habitat near Pig Hill, just outside the Kinabalu National Park by Rob Cantley around 1985 and it’s been one of his life’s ambitions ever since to recreate it from legally obtained mother stock. To this day, it remains the largest and possibly the most spectacular hybrid Nepenthes Rob – or perhaps anyone – has ever seen. Only one plant was found and the pitchers were HUGE! The largest of the pitchers found that memorable day was shipped to the Chelsea Flower Show in London, where it monopolised press attention and was certainly instrumental in helping Adrian Slack to win a Gold medal and a special annual award that year. You can read more about it in the Dec 2000 edition of the ICPS Newsletter at www.borneoexotics.com/files/rajburb.pdf. This amazing plant was left intact, but sadly, it was reportedly bulldozed away as part of the development of an asparagus farm for a wealthy politician ☹ .

Borneo Exotics has worked tirelessly for several decades to recreate this hybrid and have finally succeeded in doing so, using as the female parent a Nepenthes rajah donated in-vitro from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. The pollen donor is one of our Nepenthes burbidgeae, raised from legally collected seeds.

Although these are from microprop, due to the very large numbers of clones involved, they can be expected to be of variable form and size as they mature, although we expect that all will be colourful. Even amongst the juvenile individuals we are keeping as stock plants, variation is already becoming evident, as the photos on the pricelist show. The fun of this is that some of the plants may be as good as or even better than the original plant whose photos are shown in habitat.

Finally, there’s more good news, in that we have found this hybrid to be surprisingly vigorous and easy, especially for a hybrid involving N. rajah. It seems to require no special conditions and we grow it well in our usual treated coir fibre potting media. Sphagnum or other recognized Nepenthes media should work even better.

A random selection from very many clones out of microprop. These medium plants are potted in a 4 inch pot, filled with long fiber sphagnum moss and perlite.