Botanical History
Nepenthes eymae was discovered in central Sulawesi by Dutch botanist Pierre Joseph Eyma in 1938. Eyma's original material of this species includes the herbarium specimen Eyma 3968, which bears a male inflorescence.
Nepenthes eymae was formally described by Shigeo Kurata in a 1984 issue of the Journal of Insectivorous Plant Society. The holotype, designated as Kurata, Atsumi & Komatsu 102a, was collected on the northern spur of Mount Lumut in Central Sulawesi, at an altitude of 1850 m, on November 5, 1983. A series of isotypes (Kurata, Atsumi & Komatsu 103, 104, and 105) was also listed by Kurata. The repository of these four specimens is not indicated in the type description and they have not been located, but if they were deposited in a public institution this is likely to have been the herbarium of the Nippon Dental College (NDC). Despite this, the species name is valid per Article 37 of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, and Kurata's description includes an illustration of the holotype on page 44. Kurata published the species with the specific epithet eymai, honouring Pierre Joseph Eyma. Other authors later noted that although Eyma was male, the name is feminine, and so the epithet was emended to eymae.
Almost concurrently with Kurata's publication, John Turnbull and Anne Middleton described the same species under the name N. infundibuliformis in the journal Reinwardtia. Kurata's description was published on February 6, whereas Turnbull and Middleton's was printed four days later, on February 10. As such, the name N. eymae holds nomenclatural priority and N. infundibuliformis is considered a heterotypic synonym. A similar situation involved the descriptions of N. glabrata and N. hamata by the same authors. Turnbull and Middleton's description is based on the specimen J.R.Turnbull & A.T.Middleton 83148a, which was collected by the authors on September 20, 1983, from Mount Lumut Kecil in Sulawesi at the coordinates 1°03′S 121°41′E / 1.050°S 121.683°E / -1.050; 121.683, at an altitude of 1500 m. In their description of the species, Turnbull and Middleton stated that the type material was deposited at Herbarium Bogoriense (BO), the herbarium of the Bogor Botanical Gardens, but Matthew Jebb and Martin Cheek were unable to locate it and wrote that it "appear not to have been deposited at Bogor as stated". In addition to the herbarium specimens of N. eymae mentioned here, a number of others have appeared in the literature.
Most authors regard N. eymae as a distinct species and it has been treated as such in all major monographs on the genus, including Matthew Jebb and Martin Cheek's "A skeletal revision of Nepenthes (Nepenthaceae)" (1997) and "Nepenthaceae" (2001), as well as Stewart McPherson's Pitcher Plants of the Old World (2009). Nonetheless, some authors have expressed doubt that it merits distinction from N. maxima at the species level. In Pitcher Plants of the Old World, McPherson wrote that "the specific status of N. eymae seems warranted since the two taxa appear to occur both together and in isolated, self-sustaining communities". Whatever the status of this taxon, the vast majority of plants cultivated under the name N. eymae do not exhibit the abruptly contracted upper pitchers commonly associated with it.
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