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Nepenthes maximoides
In December 1911 the American forester H. M. Curran collected a pitcher plant in what was then Tayabas province on Luzon, with long, narrow funnel pitchers and a lid bearing two appendages. The sheet was taken for Nepenthes maxima, a species of Sulawesi and New Guinea, and lay for over a hundred years in the herbarium in Philadelphia. The duplicate in Manila was lost in February 1945 when the National Herbarium was destroyed with much of the city in the battle of Manila. In 2020 Martin Cheek and colleagues described the plant as Nepenthes maximoides, 'resembling maxima'.
No photograph of this species under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain is in the guide yet.
Identification
A climber with a round, glabrous climbing stem eight to ten millimetres thick and internodes of three to six centimetres. The leaves have a short petiole with spreading wings and are elliptic-oblong, 12.5 to 14 cm long and 2.75 to 3.8 cm wide, with two or three longitudinal nerves on each side arising in the lower part of the blade. Upper pitchers are narrowly funnel-shaped, 14 to 22.5 cm tall, only 2.5 to 3 cm wide at the base and widening towards the mouth to 4 to 6.5 cm; they are glossy and almost glabrous. The peristome is broad and flattened, six millimetres, with an outer margin bearing none to three shallow lobes. The lid is elliptic, five to six centimetres, densely set with crater-like nectar glands. Most striking are the two appendages under the lid: at the base a slightly hooked appendage seven millimetres high, curved towards the lid base, and near the tip a thread-like appendage almost a centimetre long. Lower pitchers, flowers and fruits are unknown.
Similar species
The species closely resembles Nepenthes maxima, with the same narrow funnel pitchers and comparable lid appendages, but according to DNA work that resemblance rests on convergent evolution: Nepenthes maximoides belongs in section Alatae, together with Nepenthes graciliflora among others. It differs from Nepenthes graciliflora in the narrowly funnel-shaped upper pitchers, broadest at the mouth rather than at the base, the broad, lobed peristome and the hooked basal and filiform apical appendages. Nepenthes copelandii also has narrow funnel pitchers, but hairy stems, two kinds of nectar gland and a blunt, non-hooked appendage without an apical appendage.
The trap and how it works
A pitfall of the type recently distinguished as 'narrow funnel', one of twelve functional pitcher types in the genus, each thought to obtain food in its own way. Nepenthes maxima and Nepenthes maximoides evolved this type independently. A narrow funnel with a broad, flattened rim and a lid underside full of nectar glands draws flying insects to a slick surface above a steep wall. What role the two lid appendages play in this has not been studied. Nothing is known about the prey of this species.
Habitat and ecology
From the label it can only be inferred that the plant came from montane forest, probably above 1000 m (B1). Mount Banahaw, the probable site, is at 2158 m the highest of a group of volcanoes south-east of Manila. Its slopes are forested above about 700 m; rainfall ranges from about 2400 mm a year on the north-west slope to almost 4500 mm on the north-east slope, spread over some 262 rain days. No reliable altitude is known, so the elevation field is left empty.
Distribution and elevation
Endemic to Luzon. The label gives only Tayabas province; the authors reconstructed from Curran's itinerary that the plant must have been collected on Mount Banahaw, though this is not certain. The label 'Mt. Banahaw' in our species list is therefore probably right, but rests on that reconstruction. With this species the number of pitcher-plant species known from Luzon rose to eight, against two in 2001.
- Native
Forms and variation
For a species resting on a single herbarium sheet no variation is known. The feature behind the name, the resemblance to Nepenthes maxima, is not variation but an example of how two not closely related species can evolve the same pitcher shape. No hybrids are known.
Where and when to see it
Mount Banahaw is a holy mountain, visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and hikers a year, and lies within the Mounts Banahaw–San Cristobal Protected Landscape; parts of the mountain are periodically closed for recovery. Anyone walking there with permission can watch, in montane forest above about 1000 m, for a climbing pitcher plant with long, narrow funnel pitchers and a thread at the tip of the lid. A well-documented find would be the first in more than a hundred years.
Conservation status
The species has not yet been assessed by the IUCN (Not Evaluated). The authors rated it Critically Endangered and possibly extinct: one site, one specimen, and a mountain visited by some 300,000 pilgrims and hikers a year, with forest degradation along the trails and recently a forest fire that destroyed 50 hectares. Because Philippine pitcher plants are intensively searched for by enthusiasts and botanists, they consider it unlikely that the largest and most striking pitcher plant of Luzon has been overlooked for over a hundred years. Like all Nepenthes it is listed in CITES Appendix II.
Scientific name
Nepenthes maximoides | Cheek, 2020
Nepenthes maximoides was described on 11 September 2020 by King and Cheek, in PeerJ 8: e9899. The species is endemic to Luzon, Philippines; a more precise type locality could not be established with certainty. The name is likely formed from "maxima" (the specific epithet of the related N. maxima, golf 26) and the Greek suffix "-oides" ("resembling"), i.e. "resembling N. maxima" — though an explicit source confirmation of this derivation was not found.
World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), via Plants of the World Online (POWO), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.