Nepenthes Campanulata - Discovery and Naming

Discovery and Naming

Nepenthes campanulata was first collected on September 9, 1957, on Mount Ilas Bungaan by A.J.G. 'Doc' Kostermans, the head of the Botanical Division of the Forestry Research Institute at Bogor, on the same expedition in which he collected the type material of N. mapuluensis. Kostermans wrote the following account of his discovery:

I was working for the Forestry Department at that time in Sangkulirang and when I had finished I wanted to find out about a flowering rock, Ilas Bungaan, upriver. After 10 days walking I saw the yellowish rock for the first time. When we were there we discovered that the yellow colour was that of the leaves of a Nepenthes completely covering the steep face of the 50 m high rock. We cut a tree that fell to the rock and acted as a ladder and climbed up. The Nepenthes was not in flower or fruit, but we found caves in the rock and in the caves a couple of boat-like coffins with sculptured dog-head ends which contained decapitated skeletons.

Nepenthes campanulata was described by Shigeo Kurata in 1973 based on a single specimen, Kostermans 13764, deposited at the herbarium of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. An isotype labelled "spec. nov.!" is held at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Two more isotypes are deposited at the New York Botanical Garden. According to Kurata, the collector stated that the species was endemic to this single location "presumably owing to its habitat which is noted as sand and limestone walls at an altitude of 300 m".

The type material of N. campanulata lacks floral structures and these remained unknown until the species' rediscovery in 1997.