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Nepenthes extincta
The name is a warning. Martin Cheek and Matthew Jebb named this species Nepenthes extincta in 2013 to signal that it may already be globally extinct. Only one plant has ever been collected, in August 1978, by the Japanese botanist Fumihiro Konta, on the Red Hills near Claver in north-eastern Mindanao. Those hills have since become one of the largest nickel-mining areas in the Philippines, itself one of the world's largest nickel producers.
No photograph of this species under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain is in the guide yet.
Identification
A terrestrial shrub of about a metre. The leaves are thickly leathery, glossy above and matt mid-brown below, elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, 13 to 17 cm long and 5.5 to 8 cm wide, with five or six pairs of longitudinal nerves from the base. The midrib is densely covered beneath with minute grey-white stellate hairs. The petiole is about 4.5 cm long and cylindrical from two inrolled wings. Only intermediate pitchers are known, on straight, uncoiled tendrils: ovoid-cylindrical, 18 to 24 cm tall and 6 to 8 cm wide, broadest in the lower half and gradually narrowing into a cylindrical upper part, without a waist and without fringed wings. The peristome is 7 to 8 mm wide, broadest at the sides, with a lobed outer margin and inconspicuous teeth on the inside. The lid is ovate, 5 to 6.5 cm, with a truncate base and a pronounced straight appendage. The pitcher is covered in minute white hairs and black gland dots.
Similar species
The species most resembles Nepenthes mindanaoensis, which also grows in the ultramafic north-east of Mindanao and shares the unusual combination of thick leathery leaves with nerves from the base, petioles with inrolled wings and robust ovoid-cylindrical pitchers. Nepenthes mindanaoensis, however, has fringed wings on the pitchers, a cordate lid base and scattered black bristle hairs on the midrib, not dense grey-white stellate hairs. The two have not been found together. At the type locality Nepenthes merrilliana and Nepenthes graciliflora also grew, both clearly different.
The trap and how it works
A robust pitfall without fringed wings, with a peristome that projects on the outer margin into one to three lobes on each side. The lid carries two kinds of nectar gland: dense small bordered glands over the whole surface and on the appendage, and, scattered along the margin and towards the tip, four to fifteen large glands one to two millimetres across on each side. That combination concentrates the lure on the appendage above the mouth. Whether winged lower pitchers exist is unknown; the authors do not rule out that the plant never makes them. Prey data are lacking.
Habitat and ecology
Open scrub on ultramafic rock (R3, B6), at about 400 m. It is a landscape of red, iron-rich laterite soils, poor in nutrients, where forest naturally stays low and open and where pitcher plants such as Nepenthes merrilliana and Nepenthes graciliflora thrive.
Distribution and elevation
Endemic to Mindanao, and known only from the Red Hills south-east of Claver, near the north-east coast, on the border of Surigao del Norte and Surigao del Sur provinces. The label 'Surigao del Sur' in our species list follows the description, but Claver itself lies in Surigao del Norte; the site thus lies exactly on the provincial border.
- Native
Forms and variation
For a species resting on one collected plant no variation is known. The collector, too, has remained a mystery to science: Fumihiro Konta, who published on vegetation and ferns in southern China, Thailand and Japan, could not be traced by the authors; they suspect he collected the plant during an environmental impact assessment for mining.
Where and when to see it
There is no place where this species can be seen, and the type locality has largely been dug away. Anyone walking in the ultramafic north-east of Mindanao, in remaining open scrub at low altitude, can watch for a low shrub with thick, glossy, elliptic leaves and robust pitchers without fringed wings, with a lobed rim and a grey-white hairy midrib on the leaf underside. A find would literally raise the species from the dead; document and report it.
Conservation status
The species has not yet been assessed by the IUCN (Not Evaluated). The authors rated it Critically Endangered and possibly extinct: only one plant has ever been collected, in 1978, and no reliable record has been known since. The site lies in the middle of the largest nickel-mining area in the Philippines, where several mining companies have dug over the landscape on a large scale. Like all Nepenthes it is listed in CITES Appendix II.
Scientific name
Nepenthes extincta | Jebb & Cheek, 2013
Nepenthes extincta was described in 2013 by Martin Cheek and Matthew Jebb, in "Recircumscription of the Nepenthes alata group (Caryophyllales: Nepenthaceae), in the Philippines, with four new species" (European Journal of Taxonomy 69: 1-23). Surigao del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines, at approximately 400 m elevation; only a single herbarium specimen exists, collected in 1978. The specific epithet was deliberately chosen as a cautionary designation, indicating that this species may already be extinct in the wild.
World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), via Plants of the World Online (POWO), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.