Nepenthes Aristolochioides - Botanical History

Botanical History

Nepenthes aristolochioides was first collected by Willem Meijer on August 5, 1956. The holotype, Meijer 6542, was collected on that date from Mount Tujuh (Tudjuh) in Jambi at an elevation of 2000 m. It is deposited at the National Herbarium of the Netherlands (L) in Leiden, but is in relatively poor condition. An isotype is held at Herbarium Bogoriense (BO), the herbarium of the Bogor Botanical Gardens (formerly the Herbarium of the Buitenzorg Botanic Gardens) in Java.

Although labelled as "new species?", the specimen was largely overlooked for over 30 years. In 1988, botanist Joachim Nerz became aware of it upon visiting the herbarium of Leiden University. The name N. aristolochioides was coined quite early on; it was already being used in 1994 to informally refer to this (at the time undescribed) taxon. That same year, taxonomist Jan Schlauer questioned the supposed lateral pitcher mouth of N. aristolochioides in email correspondence with botanist Matthew Jebb, who was preparing a revision of the genus at the time. Schlauer wrote that he had examined a specimen of this species (Meijer 7426) and that the seemingly vertical insertion of the pitcher mouth might be a result of the preservation process, whereby the traps had become "compressed along their longitudinal axes". In the summer of 1996, Nerz met with Schlauer and Meijer in the Frankfurt Palmengarten, where Meijer showed him a photograph of the mysterious species. Together with Katrin Hinderhofer, Nerz organised a field trip to Sumatra in June 1996 and was successful in rediscovering N. aristolochioides in the wild.

Nepenthes aristolochioides was finally described by Matthew Jebb and Martin Cheek in their monograph, "A skeletal revision of Nepenthes (Nepenthaceae)", published in the May 1997 issue of the botanical journal Blumea. Joachim Nerz wrote a detailed description of the species for an issue of the Carnivorous Plant Newsletter published the following year. The next major treatments of the species appeared in Cheek and Jebb's updated 2001 work, "Nepenthaceae"; Charles Clarke's Nepenthes of Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, also published in 2001; and Stewart McPherson's two-volume Pitcher Plants of the Old World, released in 2009, which included colour photographs of specimens from a newly discovered locality.