Watering:  Typical.

Cultivation Difficulty:  Moderate (2); prefers highland conditions; tolerates intermediate conditions.

Propagation: Generally easy, but cuttings are slow to root.

Distribution:  Borneo.¹

Ecology:  Ridgetops or mossy forest, can be epiphytic or terrestrial; 1800-2600 m.¹

Intermediate pitchers, few in number and produced just before upper pitchers appear, are often highly asymmetrical, as the middle image shows.  Clearly, the peristome is much more robust on the right side of this pitcher than on the left side, and the pitcher opening is considerably more flared on the left side.  Typically, only two or three such radically asymmetrical pitchers are produced before true upper pitchers begin to appear.

To the right is an example of an upper pitcher, albeit a distorted one.  Note that the rim of the pitcher is clearly pinched in at the sides.  At present, it is unclear whether this deformity is a developmental phase as the plant transitions from production of lower to production of upper pitchers, a consequence of hot weather, or is simply unique to this particular clone.  In any case, as the pitchers age, a white exudate builds up on the underside of the operculum.  This material was originally thought to be the eggs of a species of snail, or perhaps colonies of bacteria, but it is, in fact, produced by the plant itself, and serves as food.  Currently, according to Dr. Charles Clarke, it is thought that lowii upper pitchers serve to collect the droppings of birds and other animals which perch on the rims of the pitchers and defecate into them whilst eating the exudate.²  Clearly, this is a very unusual plant!