In search of N. rafflesiana

[David]

Yesterday Dominic, Edmond, Jonathan and I went looking for N. rafflesiana. This location is geographically somewhere central of Peninsular Malaysia. Dominic said that he has seen a plant that looked like N. rafflesiana at this location before. So our quest begins...

I was excited because N. rafflesiana was not sighted in central and north of Peninsular Malaysia for some time now.

We reached the site and found N. xhookeriana. There were only a few plants of hookers there. Yes! There's hope! If there are hookers there, there must be raffs there. We spread out and scan through the whole area about 100 to 200-metre radious...

N. xhookeriana pix...















There were a lot of N. gracilis here and there were some N. ampullaria too...











Somehow, raffs were missing from this location. We moved on to another location a couple of kilometres away...



And guess what! Look on...

We found it! N. rafflesiana!







Such beauty...





Everyone just had to have a photo session and authograph session with that raff...









There were ampullaria, mirabilis and gracilis in this location as well but sad to say only one plant of N. rafflesiana...









Found some hybrid of xtrichocarpa, ie. gracilis x ampularia...



We moved on again...

Found a mirabilis condo in another location. A Edmond for size comparison...



This clump is flowering...



We moved on yet again and in this location found U. gibba. The water is dark coffee colour from the rotting leaves and plant material...









Found some huge amps in this other location. Enjoy...







As you can see he basel pitchers have been covered by leaves and twigs. Only the vine is seen...



Found an amp condo as well but not as tall as the mirabilis condo in the other location...



Clumps of amp pitchers growing along the vines that climb up the low trees in the area...







The amp habitat. Noticed the wet media with puddles of water and the roots of trees emerging from the ground trying to get air.



On the way home. We were dead tired. Thanks to Edmond for driving us.

[hongrui]

Great find guys!

i like this hooker:


this amp is not bad too:


;D

[David]

Hi hongrui, I like that amp too. It has a nice red lips (peristome). This colouration is quite consistent on all pitchers too. However, I noticed alot of the pitchers have been chewed on by some animal or insect. It's a huge plant with a huge clump with numerous basel shots that is not shown in this picture.

[dom]

Finally the field trip report is out. David was hopping to find the red amp. But ended up we found the red ants!! And all these red ants gave us some sourveniers...Bites. My face and neck still with the reddish bite wounds.

And would like to say thank you to our "Neps Antenna" - Jonathan. And finally he made David to agree that amp is growing like a weed. hahaha... And thank you our driver - Edmund with so much patient. Last...of couse thank you to David and Jonathan for such a wonderful education trip.

[aliamyz]

How come my rafflesiana is compact a grower and the one in the picture looks very different.Those ant bite must be hurt so much.BTW, thanks for the beautiful pics guys and can you tell which location is this in KL.

[plantlover]

Ouch! Ant bites. BTW, beautiful pictures.

[dom]

May 25, 2008 10:32:23 GMT 8 aliamyz said:

How come my rafflesiana is compact a grower and the one in the picture looks very different.Those ant bite must be hurt so much.BTW, thanks for the beautiful pics guys and can you tell which location is this in KL.

Sorry. Can't tell and it is not in KL. In KL, you can big a 10ft tall pitcher plant fountain near the Merdeka Square only. ;D

[edmund83]

The trip was fun and been educated during the trip. Learn up more on nep. and more easy for me the remember the plant ID ... hehehe i suffer from CRS - cant remember nuts

Waiting for the next trip coming~~~

[shawnintland]

Hi David, Great story and pics of your trip. Glad it was so successful. Now, one request...can you go in and modify the captions on the shots of each of you with the N. raff so that we can know who is who? It would be fun to be able to put a face with the names we all see on the forums! Those 'condos' are amazing as well! Wonder how many years its taken to get that size?

[dom]

The first one is David, follow by Jonathan, Dom and Edmund.

[Robert]

Good to see you guys enjoy the trip. Everyone must be sweating all over

[David]

May 25, 2008 10:32:23 GMT 8 aliamyz said:

How come my rafflesiana is compact a grower and the one in the picture looks very different.

Most probably your rafflesiana have not started to vine yet and the pitchers you see are the lower pitchers which are more globose. The upper pitchers are trumpet shaped just like the picture I posted.

This is how a lower pitcher looks like. This is my Johor form...



There are also many forms of rafflesiana, very much like ampullaria. The shape of the pitcher and it's colours will vary from one form to another. You can ask Robert who see many of these different forms in Borneo.

[David]

May 25, 2008 19:18:18 GMT 8 Robert said:

Good to see you guys enjoy the trip. Everyone must be sweating all over

Yupe! It was fun alright! More towards dirty fund with the ant bites and me assuming that a section of the swampy area was hard ground. Stepped on it and my whole leg sank into the mud. The water went up almost all the way to my knees. So after that I've to content with my legs soaking in water in my shoes and pants for the rest of the journey.

But I would do it again tho'. This is the first time I've seen rafflesiana growing in the wild.

[David]

May 25, 2008 14:25:56 GMT 8 shawnintland said:

Those 'condos' are amazing as well! Wonder how many years its taken to get that size?

My guess is many, many years. When we went closer to look, there was many layers of old dead vines and leaves beneath the green layer and the poor tree is almost dead. The mirabilis kinda choked it

I was also surprise to see the ampullaria vines growing up so high into the trees. I guess that's how the basel pitchers get so big.

[David]

Here's a picture of the contents in one of the ampullaria pitchers at the location where the pitchers were much larger than the other sites. I noticed some ants in there too besides debris and plant materials.



Some fungus that I felt were rather beautiful...





Dominic sound asleep in dreamland on the way home. This was the last picture I took before I blackout too...

[aliamyz]

Haha tiredkah.......!!

[edmund83]

Dom .... you been watched~~~

[piscesilim]

Great! They are there. Next time must search further north.

[dom]

oh man...my ugly look!!
It is not really a tiring trip. Just the weather was too hot for us. And woke up at 5am....

The mirabilis going to fully cover that area. Btw, is there any hybrid of mirabilis + ampullaria?
Since both species found very nearby. Or mirabilis + gracilis?

[jonathan]

Hi Guys,

Wow... David great report.... thank you very much dom and edmund for showing us those beautiful location and driving us there...

The trip was great since we found what we are looking for... (N.Rafflesiana)

There are Nepenthes all around us if we care enough to look closely sometimes.... For all those people out there pls help to protect what you have and what you get to see now, because maybe after a few decade no one will get to see them in their natural habitat anymore... (Like the raff in north once roam the heat forest there but now we only manage to find a few N.hookeriana and an single N. rafflesiana...)

Dom, there are N. ampullaria × N. mirabilis = (N. × Kuchingensis) and as for N.gracillis x N.mirabilis you can refer to this link to an older post also on an field trip...
petpitcher.proboards61.com/index.cgi?board=wild&action=display&thread=1410

Take good care and have fun....

Regards
Jonathan