Nepenthes robcantleyi | prev. truncata - Queen of Hearts x King of Spades | XL size

Very exclusive - only 2 XL plants available

This is arguably one of the largest and most spectacular species in the entire genus.

The female parent of the grex that gives rise to this item has the cultivar name ‘Queen of Hearts’ and is very probably the most photographed Nepenthes in history, having appeared on many of our gold medal winning Chelsea Flower show exhibits. The male parent has the cultivar name ‘King of Spades’, which darker in overall colouration than the ‘Queen of Hearts’ and has green peristome wings.

History: In the late 1990s we bred two of the only nine plants in cultivation of this, one of the rarest of all Nepenthes. The area where seed that gave rise to the original nine plants was collected, was devastated by logging activities in the 1990s and Nepenthes robcantleyi is now critically endangered in the wild. For some years we labelled these plants as a form of Nepenthes truncata, although there were clearly striking taxonomical differences between these plants and the existing published description of N. truncata. In December 2011, N. robcantleyi was described in the Nordic Journal of Botany as a distinct species in its own right by Dr. Martin Cheek, a senior taxonomist with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The publication gives the history of this species in cultivation and the reason why the name Nepenthes robcantleyi was chosen. 

Over more than 15 years and starting well before it’s description as a new species, we had raised many tens of thousands of plants originating from seeds produced from six of the nine plants that were raised from the original seed collection. In addition, at one time we kept 550 different clones in microprop and planted out and raised them all. We have seen very little variation in morphology, or even in pitcher colouration, which rules out any significant possibility of hybrid origin and so therefore this is a true and stable species.

Description: The female parent of the grex that gives rise to this item has the cultivar name ‘Queen of Hearts’ and is very probably the most photographed Nepenthes in history, having appeared on many of our gold medal winning Chelsea Flower show exhibits. The male parent has the cultivar name ‘King of Spades’, which darker in overall colouration than the ‘Queen of Hearts’ and has green peristome wings.

Climate: Highland