Nepenthes rafflesiana is a great lowlander to start with. It is a vigorous grower that is very forgiving when it comes to care. This plant also roots very successfully from cuttings I'm told. Nepenthes rafflesiana has many, many, different color forms and varieties. In other words, it's highly variable! There are solid green, red flecked, spotted, maroon red, etc. I grow three varieties. N. rafflesiana var elongata, gigantea, and "typical X Singapore". You can see many color forms at any of the vendors' sites if you want. I grew them as indoor windowsill plants because they were lowlanders. They don't grow quite as fast as when I used to grow them in heated terrariums, but growing them as houseplants is less work and the plants don't seem to mind at all. I had problems indoors because there wasn't an adequate amount of air movement and the moss was getting "nasty" looking. I also noticed that both species weren't growing as fast as my other lowlanders. In other words they were just existing instead of thriving. So I decided to grow two of them outdoors to see how they would do. As expected, they had initial shock dealing with the lower humidity, decreased temperature fluctuations, and increased sunlight. I expect they will rebound when spring approaches and the temperatures become warmer. I still grow one variety as a windowsill plant in bedroom to see how that guy does indoors.  N. rafflesiana is an easy plant to grow in typical lowland conditions and is normally considered a good starter plant. Since N. rafflesiana grows up to 1200 m, I feel I can cross this guy over to outdoor conditions. Also another vendor told me that when his heaters broke in his greenhouse the temperatures got into the 40's during winter and his N. raffs did just fine. It didn't stress out like many other lowlanders. There are plenty of N. rafflesiana hybrids out there too! I've had a little trouble with transplant shock with this species. This might be due to the fact that most of the plants shipped are good sized and larger plants tend to take transplanting worse than the smaller guys.

Cultivation: easy under normal lowland conditions, moderate as a windowsill plant; difficult outdoors in highland conditions. Great starter plant as a lowlander but does get large
Market availability: size 3, larger plants to rooted cuttings; common
Species variability: one of the most variable! green, gigantea, elongata, spotted, typical, red, white, and other locality names as well
$ / size: inexpensive to moderate  $8.00  and up for larger plants and cuttings
Cuttings: none available for trade
Sex: unknown