Nepenthes Sibuyanensis - Botanical History

Botanical History

Nepenthes sibuyanensis was discovered during an expedition to the Philippines beginning in September 1996. The team comprised Thomas Alt, Phill Mann, Trent Smith, and Alfred Öhm. The species was formally described by Joachim Nerz in the March 1998 issue of the Carnivorous Plant Newsletter.

The holotype of N. sibuyanensis, sheet 051001, was collected on October 5, 1996, by Phill Mann and Trent Smith on Mount Guiting-Guiting at an elevation of 1300 m above sea level. The plant was growing on an open slope amongst high grasses and ferns of the genus Dipteris. The specimen includes a typical pitcher and was chosen as the holotype because the pitchers of this species are its most characteristic feature. Mann and Smith made three further collections of N. sibuyanensis on the same day and at the same altitude. These were sheet 051002, which includes vegetative parts without pitchers, sheet 051003, which consists of fruits, and sheet 051004, which includes male flowers. All four specimens are deposited at the National Herbarium of the Netherlands in Leiden.

It was initially suggested, based on early field observations, that N. sibuyanensis did not produce true upper pitchers and that lower pitchers were almost exclusively produced under a covering of moss (the authors of the describing paper mention finding only a single pitcher growing in sunlight). Cultivated plants and subsequent field studies disproved both of these hypotheses.

The first use of the name N. sibuyanensis greatly predates the formal description of this species. A certain "Nepenthes sibuyanensis Elm." appears in the December 29, 1911 issue of Leaflets of Philippine Botany, in an article by Adolph Daniel Edward Elmer on the figs of Sibuyan. Elmer wrote that this Nepenthes formed part of the summit vegetation of Mount Guiting-Guiting, which was "washed down and disseminated as botanical floats" along the Pauala River, where he observed it.