Odonata of the Cambodian coastal regions in late rainy season of 2011 by Oleg Kosterin

I strongly recommend you to read this long paper or at least some parts of it. Dr. Oleg Kosterin wrote this after the shared trip we made in Cambodia in August 2011.

http://pisum.bionet.nsc.ru/kosterin/pdf/idf_report_45.pdf

The references are:

Kosterin O., 2011, Odonata of the Cambodian coastal regions in late rainy season of 2011,

On top of being a valuable source of informations on Cambodian odonatofauna, it also provides some insight on Cambodia flora including carnivorous plants. By reading this you'll get a better understanding of habitats shared by some species of dragonflies and damselflies and carnivorous plants like Utricularia , Nepenthes or Drosera.

Congrats for this paper Oleg; it was great traveling with an expert odonatologist / entomologist such as you ;-) I can't resist to show some pictures of you looking after odonata IN a Cambodian pond (since you once allowed me to do so). That's what I call dedication!

PS: Don't miss the funny pictures Oleg made of me in front of the Utricularia odorata swarm or in front of the great dragonfly Anax immaculifrons! ;-)

International Dragonfly Fund - Report 45 (2012): 1-102

Tantalizing Nepenthes pervillei

This is a post dedicated to the species of the Seychelles Islands named after the French collector Auguste Pervillé.

I don't remember how many plants I killed along the years. 6, 7 or 8? I remember I managed once to keep a small plant in a lowland tank for almost a year but it eventually declined like all the others. I couldn't figure out the good balance betwen the media, the light, the watering and the ventilation.

Nepenthes pervillei is a unique species in the genus and it is a striking taxon just like oddities such as N. clipeata, N. truncata or N. aristolochioides. As an aesthetic, it is fascinating to me because of its architecture, the shape, colours of its pitchers, its flowers and its growth pattern. As a researcher, it is fascinating because of the sheer differences that cast it apart from the rest of the family: the inflorescence, the growth pattern and the seed are unique.

I received once a batch of seed and I first thought that I had been fooled: "These are not Nepenthes seeds!"*. They are truncated at each end and are not filiform as the other Nepenthes seeds. This was the main reason why the botanist Hallier back in 1921 decided to place Nepenthes pervillei in a genus of its own and then it became Anurosperma pervillei (Blume) Hallier f.. This proposal though did not reach any consensus and the species was reinstated in the genus Nepenthes in the later publications- firstly by Danser in1928. The Nepenthaceae family would therefore remains a monogeneric family.

In the course of an informal discussion with friend and Nepenthes expert Dr. Alastair Robinson, I expressed my fascination for the Seychelles species and said that there would be some argument to place it in its own genus. Then Alastair, with one of his smiles, said, in substance: "Why? The pitchers production is the reason the Nepenthaceae family was created for in the first place." Touché.

I only know of a handful of growers who are or were able to grow this species to maturity and even today, as far as I know, there has been only one occurence of pervillei seeds produced in cultivation. It was in 2007 in the Botanical Garden of Hyogo prefecture in Japan where Mr Doi raised two mind blowing plants that produce viable seeds.
Look at the thread below where Shinya Yamada, an expert grower from Japan, shares pictures of those fantastic plants:
http://pitcherplants.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=2001
(And you could also kill yourself by drooling dry in front of the pictures of N. clipeata and N. madagascariensis, but that's a subject for another thread :-)).

Those are just the most beautiful N. pervillei I have ever seen in cultivation.

(Photo by Shinya Yamada)

In the course of the thread posted in the forum above, you will also get a sight of the only pervillei hybrid I know, a plant involving N. bicalcarata as a parent. Until last night, when I stumbled onto Yamada San thread, I though there was no hybrid involving N. pervillei (actually I had forgotten that). I assumed this could be explained by some kind of genetic barrier, a feature that would reinforce, to me, the unique status of N. pervillei in the Nepenthaceae family. I guess I was wrong. The lack of N. pervillei hybrid might merely be explained by the difficulty to raise it to maturity.

Nepenthes pervillei is tantalizing to me because despite the fact that it is fairly available in the market at decent prices (although its availability is fluctuent) all I experienced with this species was failures.

A couple of weeks ago, I received this medium sized pervillei (15 cm large) from Borneo Exotics. What a great plant to start with, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I'm quite anxious. After all am I not the Dexter of the pervilleis? ;-) Rob Cantley very recently told me that I should grow it in intermediate conditions like he does in Sri Lanka, in his Borneo Exotics nurseries. I will seriously give it a try for sure. Maybe with the new conservatory and the little experience I now have, I will be more lucky this time.

Tantalizing indeed.

* For the record, I germinated about 6 or 7 seedlings that I managed to maintain for about a year before they died. Ok, so I killed more than 15 pervillei... Argh!! ;-(

Nepenthes specific traits are best shown in mature plants

An obvious statement?

Well, by reading some of the discussions here and then on internet forums, one can wonder ;-)

Because some Nepenthes species can develop such a plasticity in their features, identifications and discussions should only be made on mature plants grown in optimal conditions. Two conditions that are required it you want to understand the delimitations of closely related taxa such as those belonging to

the thorelii aggregate (thorelii, smilesii, kampotiana, chang, holdenii, andamana, suratensis, kerrii, bokorensis) or from the so called deaniana complex (deaniana, mira, mantalingajanensis, leonardoi, gantungensis, sp. 'Anipahan'). The same things can be said about some other sub-groups such as the spathulata complex, the singalana group and so on...

Look at the picture below. Over confident growers would say: "That's a young "Viking." (note how they don't even keep up with the late taxonomic progress since that plant is N. mirabilis var. globosa ;-)). They would go on : " And that's not even a pure one, but a kinda grade B or C from Neofarm. It may even be one of those inland "Viking" from Trang or a hybrid with mirabilis, hence the neck shown in that pitcher".

 

Well, the truth is that this young pitcher is developing on an offshoot of the large plant below:

The four pitchers you can see here (the two big ones and the two smaller ones) as well as the pitcher in the first picture all belong to the same plant. It is grown from seeds from two so called "grade A" Neofarm plants crossed by Trent & Michelle Meeks (Sunbelle Exotics) who were kind enough to send me some seeds a few years ago.

Please, note, how the big pitchers are clearly globose. Note their coloration also. Like I said: "Identifications and discussions should only be made on mature plants grown in optimal conditions."

A little game: 4 plants, 3 species ; can you recognize them?

There are three species below but four plants. The similarity between them is quite striking, don't you think?

Post your guesses and I will give the anwsers in the next 48 hours ;-)

1/   2/

3/  4/

1'/  2'/

3'/  4'/

Growing areas: epiphytes wall, Heliamphora and Nepenthes

Here are a few quick shots of some other parts of my conservatory. Thoses shelves are along a brick wall that receives currently a couple of direct sunlight early in the morning. This direct exposure to the sun should increase in the following weeks at the sun rises higher in the course of the season.  I decided to set my Heliamphora collection there although I am not sure the plants will receive enough light.

One of my main concern is that my dear marsh pitchers do get a vibrant coloration. I know very well that the cool temperatures -especially in the wintertime in our latitudes- will be mandatory to get the red orange and yellow robes Heliamphora are so loved for; it is as important though that the plants are sun bathed. Because I'm discovering the conservatory, I can't say yet if this spot I chose is a good one. But it's a bright one for sure.

Along the shelves, I set a trellis on which I placed my Tillandsia collection. I quite like how they look hung like that.

On the left (toward the south), I put all the xerophytic Tillandsia species (the grey ones) and progressively, I put the greenish ones. The right side of the trellis is less bright and it is just next to the fogger and the fan.

I also put among the green Tillandsia my mini collection of mounted orchids (Sophronitis, Maxillaria...). I hope they will be fine.

Lastly, as some may have noticed, there are two trays of Nepenthes that will be just next to the fogger. Species like tentaculata, rajah or villosa have been placed there.

So far, all the plants you are seing are doing well. They've been there for several weeks already: fingers crossed!

Sooo slooow: Drosera glabripes

I got a few seeds of this attractive south African species in 2009. I just can't recall how many seedlings I got but as long as I remember I only got that single seedling these last years.

This small plant is about 3 cm large and 3 cm high and it's "growing" all year round; there's no dormancy. It didn't bother to be changed from my former growing space in the garage, under tubes, to the new one, in the conservatory under natural light. I just let it alone and do not treat it differently than my other sundews. I'm now considering to feed it from time to time. Maybe it will trigger its growth? I have quite the same problem with Drosera hilaris. Or maybe those species are just naturally slow, I don't know.

Anti-logging activist shot in Cambodia

Chut Wutty, a leading Cambodian environmentalist has been shot dead in the Koh Kong province of Cambodia.

Details of the incident are still unclear, but apparently the environmentalist has been killed during an exchange with the Cambodian police.

An extract from the BBC website:

"Mr Wutty was one of the most outspoken activists in Cambodia. One of his colleagues told the BBC that he had angered many influential people.

He had received death threats in the past and sometimes carried an AK-47 rifle in his car.

The campaign group Global Witness says he had been one of the "few remaining Cambodian activists willing to speak out against the rapid escalation of illegal logging and land grabbing".

It says that corruption and violence around Cambodia's forests have been "well documented", and that the killing of Mr Wutty's demonstrates that "those who take on these vested interests face intimidation and even death.

The two journalists travelling with Mr Wutty were initially held by police, but they have now been released."More here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-17859016

This is a very sad news but alas it is of no surprise to me. The elite of Cambodia has been stripping their country's natural ressources and environmentalists like Chut Wutty are nothing else than plagues for them. I feel sorry for the country and for Mr Wutty family. This is a reminder: while it is quite true that a few individuals can make a difference, the price they sometimes have to pay can be too high.

Koh Kong province is exactly where I have spending my last trips researching various species of carnivorous plants. This is a reminder to me too. While it is quite romantic and thrilling to go in the unknown hoping to find some lost plants, this kind of travel can be fairly dangerous, a thing I often tend to forget.