botanyshitposts:

botanyshitposts:

ive talked on here before about how nepenthes (asian carnivorous pitcher plants) are dioecious, meaning that the individuals are either male or female; this big friend just bloomed in the greenhouse!! look at his perfect big flower vine im crying

for those asking how to tell them apart:

-this species will have one or the other per individual plant, and will often stay with this sex consistently throughout their lives in the wild. 

-the Nepenthes family is one of only 6% of the plant kingdom to be completely male or female; other plants, as you can probably guess, are both sexes at once, but some species can be male, female, both, or neither! 

-what makes an individual one sex or another is still being studied, but again, these plants can be very elastic with their sex in cultivation and may go back and forth between male and female in their lifetime.

-we dont know why nepenthes became dioecious?? like we know from fossilized pollen grains about when it happened, but we don’t know why or even how yet (i.e. the selective pressure that made them change??)

-in the wild, being only two sexes can put them at a special risk when habitat change and poaching happens, because if there’s like, 25 males and only 2 females in an area, that population is subject to inbreeding and can dwindle really quickly. 

tl;dr: plant genders are weird and they just kinda do whatever