Nepenthes

Nepenthes, commonly called tropical pitcher plants or monkey cups, is a genus of roughly 170 species of carnivorous plants forming the monotypic family Nepenthaceae, alongside numerous natural and cultivated hybrids. Most species are climbing, vine-like plants of the Old World tropics, ranging from southern China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines westward to Madagascar and the Seychelles, southward to Australia and New Caledonia, and northward to India and Sri Lanka, with the greatest diversity found on Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippines. Most Nepenthes are lowland plants of hot, humid habitats, though many others are montane species adapted to warm days and cold, humid nights. Their distinctive pitfall-trap pitchers, formed from modified leaf tips, gave rise to the common name monkey cups, from an old belief that monkeys drank rainwater collected inside them.