Nepenthaceae

Climbing or scrambling vines whose leaf tip extends into a coiling tendril that terminates in a specialised cup-shaped pitcher trap, its rim slick and its base pooled with digestive fluid that drowns and digests insects lured inside by nectar and colour.

The pitcher is not a flower or fruit at all but a heavily modified leaf tip — one of the most elaborate carnivorous trapping structures anywhere in the plant kingdom.

To check whether a plant belongs to Nepenthaceae, compare the leaf arrangement, leaf type, flower symmetry, fruit type, and one distinctive marker together. A single feature can mislead; the family pattern is the combination.