Atlanta Botanical Gardens - Part 2

This is the second post covering my family's trip to Atlanta Botanical Gardens. I'll cover the indoor collection, which includes Nepenthes and Heliamphora.

Next to the Conservation Garden is the Fuqua Orchid Center and Conservatory, in which there are many Nepenthes and Heliamphora. The Heliamphora collection consisted of one massive (several feet across) clump of plants. Some of the plants were blooming. I also finally got to see the slit halfway up the front of the pitchers that ensure the pitchers don't overflow and loose their prey. When I read about it I thought it was such a fascinating, ingenious design...Heliamphora look relatively simple compared to Nepenthes or Sarracenia, but they're still highly evolved. I guess hundreds of thousands of years of living in an ocean of clouds will do something to you...

Heliamphora flower

The Nepenthes collection, like the outdoor CP collection, looked natural. The tropical pitcher plants were allowed to climb all over surrounding vegetation and up towards the roof like (I imagine) you would see in the actual forests of Southeast Asia. 

N. sanguinea?

A bit hidden in the vegetation, Nepenthes gymnamphora had multiple pitchers open for business in the surrounding live sphagnum.

N. gymnamphora

I'm not sure what species this pitcher belongs to, but it's a nice pitcher:

A newly opening pitcher. I like how you can see the level of the fluids inside the pitcher.

There were Nepenthes growing in hanging baskets around the greenhouse too.

Live sphagnum was abound. It always looks so nice. 

In a different part of the Conservatory, in a cylindrical room right before the desert plant display, there were more Nepenthes. Here's N. rafflesiana:

N. rafflesiana

Some more Nepenthes in the same room:

As we were leaving Atlanta Botanical Gardens, my family made a detour to visit the Edible Garden. In a pond there, I found something that looked like an aquatic Utricularia. There wasn't an official tag or anything, but it looks like it has bladders and its branching string-like growth style resembles a bladderwort plant.

Atlanta Botanical Gardens has a fantastic carnivorous plant collection that spans multiple genera. If you're interested in seeing large quantities of high-quality carnivorous plants, this is a good place to visit.