Pinguicula lippoldii — Vorstman's Guide to the Carnivorous Plants

Identification

A flat rosette of entire, fleshy leaves lying against damp bank soil or a shaded face; the upper surface carries a dense glandular coat that lights up in raking light like a film of dew. From the centre rise slender, glandular-hairy scapes, each with a single two-lipped, spurred flower. In the dark gallery forest, where moss and ferns crowd together, the rosette is small and easily overlooked; the greasy, wet leaf surface is the best distinguishing character. In this species the scapes rise only a few centimetres above the rosette, which in a densely vegetated ravine means the flower barely clears the moss. The stalk too carries glandular hairs, visible with a hand lens.

Similar species

In eastern Cuba this species sits in a company of closely related butterworts that cannot be reliably split without flowers. Pinguicula orthoceras comes from the same massif but was collected considerably higher, around nine hundred to a thousand metres on the northern slope. P. jaraguana and P. moaensis belong to the serpentine streams of the Moa massif further east. Anyone finding a butterwort beside a stream at five to six hundred metres in the Cristal range has the best chance of this species — but always record the flower.

The trap and how it works

The trap works as in all butterworts: stalked glands with a sticky droplet, sessile glands that release enzymes only once prey lies on them, and a leaf margin rolling slowly towards that prey so the digestive fluid pools in a shallow depression. In gallery forest along a stream the air is full of small two-winged insects, and the permanently high humidity keeps the droplets working all day — unlike on open, sunny sites, where the trap can dry out by midday.

Habitat and ecology

Gallery forest along mountain streams: narrow, permanently damp strips in stream valleys and ravines, with the canopy closed above the water and the ground wet all year. Labels speak of siliceous, acid soil, which sets this species apart from the Cuban butterworts of limestone and of serpentine. Finds lie between roughly five hundred and six hundred metres, on the southern and northern flanks of the Sierra del Cristal, among others near Mayarí Arriba, Segundo Frente and the headwaters of the río Levisa.

Distribution and elevation

Endemic to Cuba and restricted to the Sierra del Cristal in the east of the island, on the border of Holguín and Santiago de Cuba provinces. Known sites lie around Segundo Frente, Mayarí Arriba, the Pico Cristal area, arroyo La China, La Zanja and the upper Levisa. The range therefore consists of a network of stream valleys within a single massif, a pattern repeated in almost all eastern Cuban butterworts. The Sierra del Cristal is small enough to take in at a glance on a map and large enough still to hold surprises; several of the butterworts collected here were named only in recent decades, and not every stream valley has been visited.

Recorded (one-degree cells)

Distribution based solely on records at GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), not on TDWG regions — those are often far larger than the actual range. The light halo is the area around a record, the dark core the record itself. The darker square is the only one-degree cell — roughly a hundred and ten kilometres — in which the species has been recorded, from all GBIF records. This is coarser than for most species because hardly any record of this plant carries an accurate coordinate. It shows where the species has been seen, not where it occurs: an empty square means nothing.

Forms and variation

No wild subspecies or varieties are recognised. Variation in size follows mainly shade and water level: in the deepest, most shaded part of a ravine the rosettes grow larger and thinner-leaved than on more open bank spots. Because the species was described only recently and the Sierra del Cristal is far from fully botanised, it is quite possible that the picture of its variation will change with new fieldwork.

Where and when to see it

Follow the stream, not the path. The plants sit on the permanently wet bank strip, on earth faces just above the water and on stones that spray never lets dry — places you find only by walking the waterline. Work in the morning, when the light comes in low and the glandular coat shines. The Sierra del Cristal holds one of Cuba's oldest national parks; arrange access and guidance in advance, and taking plants is both forbidden and pointless.

Conservation status

The species has not been assessed for the global IUCN Red List and is not listed in CITES. What is known: an eastern Cuban endemic of a single massif, tied to shaded stream banks in gallery forest. Such populations are sensitive to anything that changes the stream — felling of the bank forest, altered run-off, sediment from clearance — and to drought in exceptional years. The absence of a global assessment says something about the quantity of available data and nothing about the vulnerability of the species itself. What weighs extra here is that the known range lies inside a single massif: a setback affecting the whole area affects the whole species with it.

Scientific name

Pinguicula lippoldii | Casper, 2007

Described by Siegfried Jost Casper in 2007, in Wulfenia 14: 75–96, based on material collected on 26 February 1976 by J. Bisse and colleagues. The type locality lies near Mayarí Arriba, in the Sierra del Cristal, between Los Moreiros and La Zanja, at 500–600 metres altitude, in the (former) Oriente Province (now Holguín), Cuba. Who exactly is honoured by this species name could not be established with certainty; it likely refers to the botanist H. Lippold, who documented Cuban Pinguicula localities during the same period.

World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), via Plants of the World Online (POWO), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.