The species was described in 1908 by John Muirhead Macfarlane based on a specimen collected from the island of Nias, which lies off the western coast of Sumatra.

[2] The type specimen of N. beccariana was collected by Italian explorer Elio Modigliani during an 1886 expedition to Nias,[3][note a] an island located approximately 120 km from the port town of Sibolga in Sumatra.

[2] Twenty years later, B. H. Danser synonymised the taxon with N. mirabilis in his seminal monograph, "The Nepenthaceae of the Netherlands Indies".

I have not seen type material, which is collected in P. Nias, but in the Buitenzorg Herbarium there are wholly congruent plants from the neighbouring P. Sibéroet, which undoubtedly are plants of N. mirabilis, showing the peculiar character, that the upper pitchers have the shape and the wings of the lower pitchers of the common form.

[2] In their 1997 monograph, "A skeletal revision of Nepenthes (Nepenthaceae)", Matthew Jebb and Martin Cheek included N. beccariana as a synonym of N. mirabilis, having not examined the type specimen either.

[7] In 2000, Jan Schlauer and C. Nepi examined the type specimen of N. beccariana and noted significant differences between it and N. mirabilis, suggesting that it should be restored as a distinct species.

[10] Plants that resemble N. beccariana and may be conspecific with it grow along the road from Sibolga to Tarutung in North Sumatra.

Nepenthes sumatrana is distinguished by its infundibular upper pitchers (versus cylindrical in N. beccariana), which have a raised section at the front of the peristome.

In addition, the ovoid lower pitchers of N. sumatrana have orbicular lids, as opposed to the ovate operculum of N. beccariana.

It differs from the type form of N. longifolia in that the petioles are not decurrent into a pair of wings over the internodes and some of the hairs lining the leaf margins are caducous.