Nepenthes Northiana - Botanical History

Botanical History

Nepenthes northiana was first brought to the attention of the scientific community by Marianne North, who painted plants brought to her from the Bau area. Harry Veitch, owner of James Veitch & Sons, recognised these as belonging to an as yet undescribed species and sent Charles Curtis to locate a sample and send seeds to the United Kingdom. The species was subsequently named after Marianne North in 1881 by Joseph Dalton Hooker. The type specimen, M.North s.n., was collected near Jambusan in Sarawak in 1876. It is deposited at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

In her autobiography Recollections of a Happy Life, the first edition of which bears a gilt outline of N. northiana on its cover, North wrote the following account of the species's discovery:

"Mr E. went up a mountain near and brought me down some grand trailing specimens of the largest of all pitcher-plants, which I festooned round the balcony by its yards of trailing stems. I painted a portrait of the largest, and my picture afterwards induced Mr Veitch to send a traveller to seek the seeds, from which he raised plants and Sir Joseph Hooker named the species Nepenthes northiana. These pitchers are often over a foot long, and richly covered with crimson blotches."

In 1896, The Gardeners' Chronicle further elaborated on the discovery:

"The specimen from which Miss North's drawing was made was procured by Mr Herbert Everett of the Borneo Company who 'traversed pathless forests amid snakes and leeches to find and bring it down to the artist.' 'Only those', writes Miss North, 'who have been in such places can understand the difficulties of progress there. The specimens grew on the branches of a tree about 1000 ft above the sea on the limestone mountains of Sarawak. When I received them I tied them in festoons all around the verandah and grumbled at having only one small half-sheet of paper left to paint them on.'"

North's painting of N. northiana is now on display at the Marianne North Gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

In the decades following its discovery, N. northiana was featured in a number of botanical publications. In a 1882 issue of The Gardeners' Chronicle, Frederick William Burbidge proposed that the taxon represented a natural hybrid between N. sanguinea and N. veitchii:

"Your figure of Nepenthes Northiana was very good. Miss North's drawing, however, has, if I recollect right, a ground-tint of bright reddish-crimson on which darker blotches are laid. It is a fine thing, and, as I firmly believe, a natural hybrid between N. sanguinea × N. Veitchii. The oblique mouth of the urns would suggest N. Rajah as one of the parents, but then his highness only holds court, so far as we know at present, on Kina Balu, 250 miles further north, and never at a less altitude than 4500 feet, rising to near 10,000 feet.

In earlier times he may have been an inhabitant of the plains—at any rate no one can place the pitchers of N. Northiana, N. Veitchii, and N. sanguinea side by side without being struck by their affinity. Again, a glance at your engraving of N. Northiana reminds one of a long-urned form of N. Rajah in obliquity of mouth and its wavy-margined frill. The cauline pitchers of N. Rajah have never yet been figuted. I was with Mr. Harry Veitch when Miss North first showed him the picture of N. Northiana, and it was a revelation to us both. I had the latitude and longitude of its habitat in my portfolio when I left Chelsea for Borneo, but unfortunately never had the chance of seeing Sarawak ; my lot was the wild north-west coast, among the pirate chiefs, and very good genial fellows I found them !"

Subsequent authors realised that Burbidge's hybrid hypothesis was erroneous when it became apparent that N. sanguinea is altogether absent from Borneo. In 1884, Eduard August von Regel published a short article on N. northiana in the journal Gartenflora. Günther Beck von Mannagetta und Lerchenau described N. spuria in his 1895 monograph, "Die Gattung Nepenthes". This taxon is a nomen illegitimum and is now considered synonymous with N. northiana. In his Handleiding tot de kennis der flora van Nederlandsch Indië of 1900, Jacob Gijsbert Boerlage mentioned a certain N. nordtiana. This name is considered a sphalma typographicum (misprint) of N. northiana.

The next major taxonomic treatment of the species came in 1908, when John Muirhead Macfarlane revised the genus in his monograph, "Nepenthaceae", and provided an emended description of N. northiana.

A year later, J. Desloges described the variety Nepenthes northiana var. pulchra. It is not considered taxonomically valid today.