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Nepenthes had a bucket for the same purpose at the end of every leaf, Burm. Madder. Four males and one female. This plant is cultivated in very large quantities for dying red. If mixed with the food of young pigs or chickens, it colours their bones red.
The orchids were of the most brilliant colours; and now and then they passed a lake or pool in the depths of the jungle which would be covered in places with the flower of the lotus, while in every sunny opening the great clusters of nepenthes the pitcher plant brightened the scene.
Those of the Croton, according to our knowledge regarding similar cases, must have arisen at once, and hence the conclusion that the ascidia of Nepenthes are also originally due to a sudden mutation. Interrupted leaves, with an ascidium on a naked prolongation of the midvein, are by no means limited to the Croton varieties.
But he gave little heed, for he was impatiently awaiting the series of plants which most bewitched him, the vegetable ghouls, the carnivorous plants; the Antilles Fly-Trap, with its shaggy border, secreting a digestive liquid, armed with crooked prickles coiling around each other, forming a grating about the imprisoned insect; the Drosera of the peat-bogs, provided with glandular hair; the Sarracena and the Cephalothus, opening greedy horns capable of digesting and absorbing real meat; lastly, the Nepenthes, whose capricious appearance transcends all limits of eccentric forms.
In this way it is easily conceivable that peltate leaves are a frequent specific character, while ascidia are not, as they only appear in the special cases of limited adaptation, as in the instances of the so called pitcher-plants. The genera Nepenthes, Sarracenia and some others are very well known and perhaps even the bladderworts or Utricularia might be included here.
Milton also alludes to a famous recipe for an invigorating draught, called Nepenthe, which the Egyptian queen gave to Helen: "Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena, Is of such power to stir up joy as this, To life so friendly or so cool to thirst." Comus
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