Question
QUESTION: My pitcher plant has lots of pitchers and seems to grow quickly. Some of the pitchers dry up and I cut them off.  Now I have a fairly long feather growing from the very top. What do I do with it? It doesn't appear to be new growth of leaves and pitchers.

ANSWER: Hello Betty,

It sounds like you have a healthy plant since it produces a lot of pitchers.

I am not sure what you mean by "feather." Are you indicating a flower stalk?

What type of pitcher plant are you inquiring about? There are 5 main genera of pitcher plants ranging from North American Sarracenias and Cobra Plants, South American Heliamphora, Australian Cephalotus, and Asian Nepenthes.

Nepenthes look like a vine of several feet to over 30 feet in length with large leaves, tendrils at the tips of the leaves, and pitchers growing on the ends of the tendrils. The Cephalotus looks like a tiny rosette of leaves with small thimble sized pitchers interspersed with the leaves. The other three genera of pitcher plants all look like tubes, trumpets, or cones sticking up out of the ground and might grow from 8 inches to a couple of feet in size.

My first guess is that you are asking about a flower stalk beginning to appear on a Nepenthes since their flower scapes tend to look rather odd in comparison to the flowers of other plants. If the plant is growing something, you really do not have to "do" anything with it. The plant knows what it is doing (so to speak). So long as leaves, pitchers, and tendrils are not deformed, burned, dried up, or unformed, their is nothing wrong, and if the plant is indeed flowering, it means that it really is happy with your home environment. A Nepenthes flower scape will grow out looking rather like a brush with tiny protrusions around it, so I suppose it would look a bit like a feather. The protrusions are the flowers. When they open, do not smell them, they stink like a load of dirty laundry.

Send me a followup and let me know what kind of plant you have and give me more detail about this "feather" so we can positively figure out what is happening.

Christopher

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: It may indeed be a Nepenthes. The feather looks like you described. I now have 2 feathers. Thanks for the smell factor! Will it be harmful to dogs? Where can I see pics of an entire plant to further identify?

Answer
Hello Betty,

So far as I know their are very few if any carnivorous plants that are harmful to anything larger than a rat. The largest Nepenthes have been reported as catching and digesting rats, birds, snakes, lizards, and frogs, but none over the size of a regular rat. Their smell and taste is not particualry harmful to animals either, however; like any plant material that dogs and cats eat, they use it as roughage to induce hairball expulsion from their stomachs. So you might see a dog or cat gag and vomit after eating a Nepenthes leaf. The guys at Sarracenia Northwest explained that their cats occasionally chew on the Nepenthes leaves and gag afterwards, but are not harmed by the experience.

Sorry about that, I intended to add some sites to help you with some pictures on what different carnivorous plants look like.

Sarracenia Northwest, one of the other carnivorous plant experts here is actually a nursery specializing in these plants.... They have a site called cobraplant.com that contains many pictures and care sheets to help out new growers with their plants. Those pictures should help you identify what type of plant you have if not the exact species.

Another site with a gallery of pictures is at carnivorousplants.org/

That site is a carnivorous plant society with a seed bank and valuable info on these plants.

Happy searching,

Christopher