Chapter I 

 HELIAMPHORA 



Discovery. — Appearance of H. nutans. — Discovery of other species. — Habitat. — 

 Leaf structure. — Leaf forms. — Comparison of species. 



The genus Heliampliora is based on a plant, H. nutans, collected by 

 ScHOMBURGK who found it growing "in a marshy savannah, at an ele- 

 vation of about 6000 ft. above the level of the sea on the mountain of 

 Roraima," "the fruitful mother of streams," on the borders of British 

 Guiana. (Bentham 1840; Schomburgk 1841). Im Thurn (1887) de- 

 scribed its habitat and appearance. " the most remarkable 



plant of the swamp is the South American pitcher plant, Hel- 



ianiphora nutans Benth., which grows in wide-spreading, very dense 

 tufts in the wettest places, but where the grass happens not to be long. 

 Its red-veined pitcher-leaves, its delicate white flowers raised high on 

 red tinted stems, its sturdy habit of growth, make it a pretty little pic- 

 ture wherever it grows it attains its full size and best de- 

 velopment up on the ledges of the cliff of Roraima and even 



on the top." (Im Thurn 1887). 



For many years only the one species, H. nutans Bentham {i — i), was 

 known. The meagre hterature deals almost solely with this plant. 

 Four other species are now known. Three of these were discovered on 

 Mt. Duida, Venezuela, by Dr. G. H. H. Tate just previous to 1931, 

 and were described by Dr. H. A. Gleason in 1931. An examination 

 of the herbarium material (all t3^e specimens in the herbarium of the 

 New York Botanical Garden) was made possible for me through the 

 kindness of Dr. Gleason, and my notes on these species have been 

 published (1933). A fourth species, also discovered by Dr. Tate in 

 1937-8 in the same general region, is H. minor (Text fig. i). The 

 three Mt. Duida species, H. Macdonaldae (i — -2), H. Tyleri and H. 

 Tatei, are closely related and furnish a striking example of closely 

 related species arising within a restricted region (Lloyd 1905). Fur- 

 ther exploration may show the genus Heliaynphora to be as prolific 

 of species as the North American Sarracenia, or even more so. 



Heliamphora grows in a region of vast rainfall, under extremely wet 

 conditions of soil and air. It is cultivated only with difficulty, but 

 successfully at the Edinburgh Botanical Garden, and I am indebted to 

 Sir William Wright Smith for both preserved and living material of 

 the species H. nutans, on which the present account is based. The 

 name Heliamphora means swamp-pitcher. 



The accounts of H. nutans given us by Zipperer (1885), Mac- 

 farlane (1889, 1893), GoEBEL (1891), and by one of his students, 

 Krafft (1896), leave Httle to be added. The plant consists of a rosette 

 of basal leaves arising from a strong rootstock. It produces a simple 

 racemose inflorescence of white or pale rose colored apetalous flowers. 

 The 4-6 sepals are ovate-acuminate in form, with numerous stamens 

 and a trilocular ovary with a single style. The normal mature leaves 



