Post by David on Jan 18, 2007 13:25:14 GMT 8
Just to share an article I came across with regards to Nepenthes chaniana. This article is on www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=45221
28 October, 2006
Kota Kinabalu: World authority on the ecology of pitcher plants Dr Charles Clarke has discovered a new species in Sabah.
It has been named Nepenthes chaniana (Nepenthaceae) after Sabahan Datuk CL Chan, who has become the first Malaysian to gets a nepenthes species named after him.
The species was found on Gunung Alab - the highest peak on the Crocker Range Park, which also means a protected habitat.
The discovery was published in the Sabah Parks Nature Journal.
This gives Sabah another added credential as one the 12 mega-biodiversity hot spots in the world.
After taxonomic efforts with Ch'ien Lee and Stewart McPherson confirmed it was new, the James Cook University research scientist decided to name it after Chan, as a tribute to Chan's enormous publishing efforts on the biodiversity of Borneo and elsewhere.
"I feel it's a great honour," beamed Chan, Managing Director of Natural History Publications (Borneo). The twist to the big breaking news is that this particular pitcher plant had actually been sighted in Sabah for ages.
But for a long, long time, N. chaniana was mistaken as Nepenthes pilosa Dans.
The latter was found in the remote mountains of Kalimantan in 1899 by Indonesian botanist, Amdjah who was part of the Nieuwenhuis Expedition and was subsequently described by Dutch botanist, B.H. Danser, in 1928.
Amdjah collected two and only two specimens of N. pilosa Dans on January 28, 1899 at 1,600m from Bukit Batu Lesung which is located geographically close to the center of Kalimantan but the population of N. pilosa from which his (Amdjah) material was collected has never been seen since.
As such, Dr Clarke had long doubted whether the so called 'N. pilosa' in Sabah is the same as the N. pilosa of Kalimantan.
Clarke made a personal expedition to Bukit Batu Lesung in July 2006 to check it out and found to his astonishment the real N. pilosa of Kalimantan is much more rounder and broader in shape.
Hence, Sabah's so called 'N. pilosa' is decisively a different species.
Clarke, who has written a record of five books on nepenthes, rectified the mistake and that means N. chaniana is the newest species of nepenthes in the world!
28 October, 2006
Kota Kinabalu: World authority on the ecology of pitcher plants Dr Charles Clarke has discovered a new species in Sabah.
It has been named Nepenthes chaniana (Nepenthaceae) after Sabahan Datuk CL Chan, who has become the first Malaysian to gets a nepenthes species named after him.
The species was found on Gunung Alab - the highest peak on the Crocker Range Park, which also means a protected habitat.
The discovery was published in the Sabah Parks Nature Journal.
This gives Sabah another added credential as one the 12 mega-biodiversity hot spots in the world.
After taxonomic efforts with Ch'ien Lee and Stewart McPherson confirmed it was new, the James Cook University research scientist decided to name it after Chan, as a tribute to Chan's enormous publishing efforts on the biodiversity of Borneo and elsewhere.
"I feel it's a great honour," beamed Chan, Managing Director of Natural History Publications (Borneo). The twist to the big breaking news is that this particular pitcher plant had actually been sighted in Sabah for ages.
But for a long, long time, N. chaniana was mistaken as Nepenthes pilosa Dans.
The latter was found in the remote mountains of Kalimantan in 1899 by Indonesian botanist, Amdjah who was part of the Nieuwenhuis Expedition and was subsequently described by Dutch botanist, B.H. Danser, in 1928.
Amdjah collected two and only two specimens of N. pilosa Dans on January 28, 1899 at 1,600m from Bukit Batu Lesung which is located geographically close to the center of Kalimantan but the population of N. pilosa from which his (Amdjah) material was collected has never been seen since.
As such, Dr Clarke had long doubted whether the so called 'N. pilosa' in Sabah is the same as the N. pilosa of Kalimantan.
Clarke made a personal expedition to Bukit Batu Lesung in July 2006 to check it out and found to his astonishment the real N. pilosa of Kalimantan is much more rounder and broader in shape.
Hence, Sabah's so called 'N. pilosa' is decisively a different species.
Clarke, who has written a record of five books on nepenthes, rectified the mistake and that means N. chaniana is the newest species of nepenthes in the world!
