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Nepenthes barcelonae
In February 2014 the Filipino botanists Julie Barcelona and Danilo Tandang, together with Pieter Pelser, found a pitcher plant with striking two-tone colouring on a mountain in Luzon's Sierra Madre: the lower pitchers bright red, the higher ones pale green. The species was described a year later and named for Barcelona, a specialist in the ferns of the Philippines and in Rafflesia. The precise site was not published, to prevent hobbyists from collecting the wild plants.
No photograph of this species under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain is in the guide yet.
Identification
A climber two to three metres tall, largely glabrous apart from pitchers and flowers, with a round stem four and a half to seven millimetres thick that usually bears two narrow wings. The leaves are sessile and oblong, mostly 19.5 to 23 cm long and 2.5 to 4 cm wide, with an obtuse to acute tip. The character the species is known for is the difference between two types of upper pitcher. Pitchers hanging lower than one and a half metres on the plant are bright red with a green lid flushed red, slightly curved cylindrical, 6 to 18 cm tall and 2.7 to 6.8 cm wide, two to three times as tall as broad, with a peristome of 6 to 10.5 mm. Higher on the stem come glossy pale green pitchers 10 to 12 cm tall and only 2.6 to 2.7 cm wide, four to five times as tall as broad, with a narrower peristome. The peristome is glossy dark red in both, nearly cylindrical in section, with teeth about a millimetre long on the inner margin. The lid is ovate and held almost horizontal. Rosette pitchers and flowers have not been described.
Similar species
On Luzon the closest relatives are Nepenthes ventricosa, found across much of the island, and Nepenthes alzapan, known from one 1925 collection from the same mountain chain. Nepenthes ventricosa has pitchers with a pronounced waist and is usually pale, yellowish white to pink; Nepenthes alzapan is a small plant with rotund pitchers and an acutely triangular stem. The colour pattern of Nepenthes barcelonae, red pitchers low and green ones high, with a glossy dark red peristome, is distinctive in the Sierra Madre.
The trap and how it works
A pitfall that changes form as the plant grows, but not in the usual way: not from ground pitcher to aerial pitcher, but within the aerial pitchers, from broad and red to narrow and green. The glossy dark red peristome with its teeth on the inner margin is in both the slick rim down which insects slide inside. Beneath the lid lie 30 to 90 rather large, elliptic nectar glands on each side. Why the plant makes two such different aerial pitchers has not been studied; in other species a similar difference in shape and colour has been linked to different prey groups, but for this species there are no data.
Habitat and ecology
Submontane forest, sometimes stunted, between 1500 and 1700 m in the Sierra Madre (B1). This is the mossy montane forest of the chain's higher peaks, where wind and poor soil keep the forest low. The description notes nothing special about the soil.
Distribution and elevation
Endemic to Luzon, and known from one mountain in the Sierra Madre in Aurora province. The label 'Luzon, Sierra Madre' in our species list can thus be narrowed to Aurora; the discoverers deliberately did not publish the name of the mountain, and this guide does not give it either. The authors estimated the range at less than ten square kilometres.
- Native
Forms and variation
No varieties have been described. The two-tone difference between lower and higher pitchers is a property of every plant and not a difference between forms. Within the lower pitchers the spread in size is large, from six to eighteen centimetres. No natural hybrids have been reported.
Where and when to see it
The site has been deliberately kept secret, and with reason: the species is attractive to collectors. Anyone walking in the higher parts of the Sierra Madre in Aurora can look out, in stunted montane forest above 1500 m, for a climber with red pitchers low in the shrubs and green ones higher up. Take photographs, note the altitude, and leave the plants be.
Conservation status
The species has not yet been assessed by the IUCN (Not Evaluated). The authors rated it Critically Endangered: one site, with a range and area of occupancy of less than ten square kilometres. As threats they named poaching by collectors and degradation of the forest by shifting cultivation and illegal logging. Like all Nepenthes it is listed in CITES Appendix II.
Scientific name
Nepenthes barcelonae | Tandang & Cheek, 2015
Nepenthes barcelonae was described in 2015 by Martin Cheek, Danilo Tandang and Pieter Pelser, in Phytotaxa 222(2): 145-150. Stunted submontane forest at 1,500-1,700 m in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Luzon, Philippines; the precise locality was deliberately withheld from publication to protect the vulnerable wild population from collectors. The specific epithet honours Julie F. Barcelona, who discovered the species in February 2014 together with Danilo Tandang and Pieter Pelser.
World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), via Plants of the World Online (POWO), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.