The Discovery of Nepenthes attenboroughii

to begin your next adventure visit w-w-w learn and in some cases truly unexplored my name is Stuart Macpherson for the last decades I've been studying carnivorous plants to write a series of books and particularly these they're called pitcher plants or Nepenthes and they're among the most beautiful of all carnivorous plants but many remain little known right into the 21st century ten years ago dozens of Nepenthe species had not ever been studied or even photographed so in the year 2007 I set out to climb hundreds of mountains all across Southeast Asia to create a study of all Nepenthe species known at that time and I published my findings as two books titled pitcher plants of the old world the Nepenthes species of the Philippines were particularly little-known at that time and this was especially true for the island of Palawan located close to Borneo I thought palawan was particularly interesting because it has a spine of large Peaks that run all the way along its length and most of its highlands had been little explored by botanists some of its mountains at that time had never even been visited so in june 2007 i visited palawan with two friends botanist alistair robinson and falco highness to find out what Nepenthes occur on this island the story had particularly aroused our interest a team of missionaries climbed up a mountain called Mount Victoria to install a repeater tower to communicate with the missionary outpost in a valley nearby unfortunately the missionaries got lost along the way and became stuck on the mountains upper slopes when alarm was raised a team of local hunters was sent into the forest to try and find them the hunters went all the way to the summit and eventually rescued the missionaries and helped them back down to the lowlands the ordeal was published in local newspapers and the hunters reported seeing plants with giant cup shaped leaves on the summit Aleister Volker and I suspected that their plant with cup-shaped leaves might be a species of Nepenthes so we decided to climb up the little explored man Victoria to find out arriving in Palawan we drove south to the town of nara and visited jolo rutile a captain of barangay princess of Abuja to ask permission to climb mount victoria the captain granted permission and kindly drove us out in his patrol vehicle to a hamlet close to the base of Mount Victoria he asked around to try and find anyone who could help guide us up the mountain he managed to track down the very hunters who helped rescue the missionaries several years earlier the only people who knew the way to the summit Rodolfo Quintero Reynaldo Posada and a manseok Ramco of the tag ban WA tribe just before we were about to leave the clouds cleared and we got our first glimpse of the summit of mount victoria towering above as we began our expedition i wondered what we might find on the mountains imposing summit it's ten years later and I'm back in useful palawan to return to mount victoria with a team of local friends I hope to trek back to the summit once more well up there in the clouds that's Mount Victoria ten years ago there were absolutely no detailed maps at all of the mountain in fact it was often missed off the maps there are also no records of any botanists or zoologists ever exploring the mountains or ever reaching at the top the only record of people going up there was a report of missionaries in the early 2000s they documented their ordeal in the papers and they reported plants with big cup shaped leaves at the time there's only one species of Nepenthes known from palawan attempt these mirror that's relatively small so Alastair Falco and I knew it couldn't be in the Pentheus mirror so we wanted to get up to the top of map Victoria follow the footsteps of the missionaries and find out what the plant is let's do the journey again and find out our ascent in 2007 took five days many parties have climbed mount victoria since but the summit is still just as foreboding sulking mysteriously in the clouds beyond the valleys well look this isn't a more Fatalis flower which I've never seen this species before I have no idea which what it is it's about 1.8 meters tall or so look and yeah spectacular flower and quite a strong smell as well someone will forefathers are planted here as a crop but this is obviously a wild one so I don't think this is a crop species the great find on the first reality soon we passed the very last homestead and there were no paths just the faint traps for hunters our team of local Porter's traipse past carrying their loads and the forest suddenly turned into kazarina trees and we spotted in a pen thief wow there's got to be maybe six meters tall this is the typical form the pure green form of Nepenthes philip analysis it's found only on the island of Palawan this population is exactly how it was ten years ago and I remember being impressed by how the plants climb up surrounding shrubs and trees but I also remember becoming very worried at this point in our ascent ten years ago in case this common lowland species was what the report from the missionaries had referred to although in a Pentheus Philip analysis is beautiful it would have been a great disappointment if all we found at the summit of the mountain was this common species I remember finding two color forms in 2007 and both still grow here today the more common yellow form and a beautiful rarer form with reddish pictures nearby grows the small carnivorous bladderwort new trickle area heteros apalla the valley narrowed and steep cliffs may progress difficult the only way to proceed towards the mountain was by walking in a river but it began to rain and the flow of the river became more violence cliff SRI emerged on different sides of the banks and so we had to keep crossing the river to make progress back in 2007 we had to make 43 river crossings during our trip up the mountain a more direct path has since been established and only 15 river crossings are necessary when ascending the mountain today well we just got to the last River before the campsite for a night tonight but as you can see the rain has made the river swell and it's pretty violent so we're going to give it an hour wait and see and hope it'll go down fingers crossed we'll just about make it across tonight the setup can't forget that so let's see what happens in an hour ten years ago conditions were identical it rained heavily during our first afternoon we had to make a camp along the riverbank hoping that the river wouldn't slow during the night and wash our tents away well it's nearly 6 p.m. and the river hasn't subsided it's still pretty rough and it's going to be getting dark soon so we've set up the tent I'm going to make camp on this side of the river it's actually a much better campsite than what we had 10 years ago so fingers crossed we'll see what the rivers like tomorrow and hopefully live it karma and we can continue on that journey up the mountain conditions were dry overnight and thankfully the river level fell the guides broke camp at first light ten years ago I noticed how the guides preferred not to carry soft Western backpacks but found wooden rat and backpacks easier to carry although they looked incredibly uncomfortable to me at least as was the case a decade ago the guide strapped our backpacks to theirs and they set out once more across the river carrying their heavy loads for the roughest river crossings the guides made ropes from rat and stems to help the party across even though the water level had reduced from the night before and despite the fact that water was just waist height the current was often strong blasting your legs as you walked pretty soon we were all thoroughly drenched but step-by-step we were getting closer we saw some last Nepenthes Philip enhances plants growing above a waterfall after the last river crossing we finally left the river behind during the original expedition at this point I noticed lots of unusual life on the forest floor bizarre blue mushrooms plants covered with purple hair beautiful orchids palms with spines and on wet rocks we encountered another species of carnivorous bladderwort utricle area straw tula with small but pretty flowers and hundreds of leeches they wait on branches to climb onto you then attack any exposed skin to drink your blood after many hours of trekking we set up another camp on the slopes of the mountain just before darkness descended the guides quickly made a fire and they set up their hammocks well on our second night of our expedition something really dramatic happens the guides were using their blades their machetes to Jimmy open tin cans of tuna and meat and whenever I saw them do this I'd always give them my my opener to do it safely but generally they just they just didn't use it and they used their own they put the full weight down on the blade and slowly just push open the can work it though we're around and standing at the top of and then open the top okay because they're Catholic you can see what I mean here unfortunately that second night it started raining really hard and in the dark one of the guides have been doing this what they can dreaming it open with that blade but slipped and the blade came right down on their hand really really really sharp and really heavily and it just cut straight through the guys came up to me for help and I I use butterfly stitches to stitch it together and then put a bandage around and the three of us I was to poke when I insisted that the next day we just forget the trip returned back down to the lowlands we told the guide would pay for medical course he didn't have to worry about that we're just getting medically looked after and treated but he absolutely refused insisted he wanted to go up and he actually said but even if we went down the next day he was still going to go up anyway it was determined to see what was on the summit so in the end we did continue in the next day but our trip nearly ended by the campfire because of their incident on the second night the guides collected flammable and Masika resin from the trees and by the light of the burning resin we all turned in early for the night exhausted from the day's climbing our third morning was misty and I was excited to reach the summit the terrain became much harder rockier and masya ah this is the way we hit this big black slope up here I remember this is a bit tricky we had to proceed carefully up the rock wall but we didn't have any technical climbing equipment and medical help was several days away but above the rock wall that began dense bamboo forest I remember we just took a few a few steps through this bamboo and suddenly it ended and then the mountain opened up and the pain trees were everywhere so a few final steps through this dense bamboo jungle the bamboo abruptly ended and we suddenly had a beautiful view of the lowland from whence we trekked and after a few minutes climbing through the scrub we found something really special just down here a giant pitcher plant within moments it was clear that this beautiful species was unlike any other found anywhere else in the world and therefore had to be a new species and isn't it wonderful all around in the vegetation were the mouths of the great pitchers gaping as if hungry we were also surrounded by the giant leaf rosettes of the new pitcher plant the foliage of many specimens being up to a meter across Aleister folker and I were immediately impressed by the contrasting color ation of the pitchers most had mottled purpose brown patches on the inside often with a beautiful stripy para stem and a spectacular lid with red yellow and purple flecks although a few specimens were pure yellow pitchers and some plants that by no means all bor leaves with striking red undersides the very biggest pictures that we found were 30 centimeters tall making this new species among the biggest of all pitcher plants known during a separate expedition to mount victoria Alistair Robinson in Jeremiah Harris made an extraordinary observation they discovered a dead shrew that had fallen into one of the great pitchers Alistair returned two months later and found the exact same pitcher and observed the truth had been reduced to a dry husk it would be easy to sensationalize Nepenthes and described them as shrew eating plants but this would actually be wrong the truth is that it's extremely rare for any carnivorous plant to catch vertebrates and the trapping of such large animals if the result of misadventure rather than evolutionary design the shrew probably fell into the pitcher or searching for water the pitcher plant definitely didn't evolve to trap such large animals nevertheless similarly sized Nepenthes species such as Nepenthes Rajah and known with certainty to occasionally kill animals as big as rats we noticed many of the pitchers were full of mosquito larvae each pitcher can be a habitat for dozens of species often many of which live nowhere else on earth so each pitcher can be seen to be a miniature world onto itself full of unique life and the life inside the Nepenthes Attenborough pictures has never been studied after observing the new species of Nepenthes extensively Alistair falker and I climbed onwards to the summit of mount Victoria we had to cross a tumble of loose sharp blades of ultramafic rock that moved as we walked across the moor and as we ascended a narrow Ridge on one side we passed a cliff that fell away for hundreds of meters and among caches of weird twisted tress Enya's that resembled miniature palm trees we found another new species of carnivorous plant a sun-joo or drosera this one we also knew to be unlike any other species known at that time its leaves aligned with droplets of sticky glue that trap and kill small prey Alastair Falk and myself along with our local friends finally reached the very summit of the mountain as the clouds briefly cleared we enjoyed a spectacular view of the mount victoria massive whilst on the mountain we decided to name the giant new pitcher plant after Sir David Attenborough in recognition of his life's work documenting the natural world which has inspired generations around the world and better appreciating the beauty of nature we asked her David for his permission which he kindly granted and the Sun jus was named drosera ultra massacre after the ultramafic substrate on which it exclusively grows well it really was an honor to be involved in the discovery of this incredible new pitcher plant species Nepenthes Attenborough really can be one of the biggest of all the pitcher plants and it's pretty amazing that it was unknown and undocumented really until the 21st century it would be like finding an elephant today in the mammal world I've always wondered why this mountain was unstudied in undocumented for its plants and as far as I'm aware they still never been a proper botanical survey or zoological Survey undertaken right here I think it was for a number of different reasons there was some big political problems in Palawan in the late 20th century and as a result of that very few people came here very few botanists and soldiers came to Palawan and started exploring the island and just simply the number of Peaks on palawan and the number of ridges and the difficulty in getting up some of those places that just meant that there are some of the last unexplored and unknown places on the planet in still today and there are thousands and thousands of peaks and mountains all across Southeast Asia that have never been explored and certainly for the 11 attendees and other specialist plant and animal groups so it really does make you wonder what else could be out there when after Faulker and I climbed Mount Victoria in 2007 we found plants of Nepenthes Attenborough with pictures up to 30 centimeters tall however during this climb ten years later the pictures of most of the plants that I observed were generally smaller it had been a very dry year and it seems as though the plants on the summit of Mount Victoria are very strongly impacted by rainfall patterns the wet of the year the bigger the pitchers during more recent expeditions Nepenthes Attenborough has been found on several other peaks in the Victoria massive including Mount side port nearby so the species is more widely distributed than on the single summit of mount victoria and hopefully we'll always have a secure future as the weather started to deteriorate we all began the descent in the heavy mist two days later when we finally reached the lowlands we look back at Mount Victoria and thought about the incredible plants new to science we took a photo together with our local friends and I'm very glad to say Renaldo the guide who had injured his hand made a full recovery when the description of the species was published much to our complete surprise Nepenthes Attenborough was chosen as one of the top 10 most important species discovered that year newspapers and radio stations around the world covered the story some of the coverage was completely exaggerated and Nepenthes Attenborough I was made out to be a rat eating plant the New York metro suggested that it might be a solution to the rat infestation on the Metro Underground's and returning back to Paulo and a few years later we were happy to see that the plant had even made it onto the local road signs and the publication brought an increasing amount of awareness concerning the importance of Mount Victoria and hopes are that the Victoria range will become a protected area in the future as De Falco and I continued to explore together and we discovered many further new species and relocated a couple lost to science three years later I returned back to palawan and explored another mountain nearby with Jason's evanthia a friend from Palawan and together we discovered an even bigger new species we called it Nepenthes Paulo an answer center and it's so big you can put your entire hand into its pitches palawan is a beautiful island and much less developed than the rest of the Philippines so large areas of pollen remain covered by intact forests that harbours diverse wildlife I left palawan hoping its future would be a sustainable one where ecotourism a love for what makes the island great its nature spectacular landscapes and interesting local cultures can be preserved for future generations to begin your next adventure visit WWF on adventures calm [Music] to begin your next adventure visit www.gfi.com/webmonitor [Music]

Channel: Redfern Natural History Productions

Views: 172,742

Keywords: Nepenthes attenboroughii, Nepenthes, attenboroughii, pitcher, pitcher plant, carnivorous plant, carnivorous, plant, expedition, explore, explorer, rainforest, Palawan, Mount Victoria, Philippines, Stewart, McPherson, Stewart McPherson, Drosera, Sarracenia, Heliamphora, Redfern, Redfern Natural History, Redfern Adventures

Id: ntm7g4P9GW0

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2017