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Nepenthes cid
A pitcher plant known from one herbarium sheet. In December 1952 F. Cid collected a small, hairy plant high in a tree in Bukidnon province on Mindanao; the sheet ended up in the Leiden herbarium and went unnoticed for sixty years, until Martin Cheek and Matthew Jebb recognised it in 2013 as an undescribed species. Nepenthes cid is thus a textbook case of how herbarium work and field work complement each other in this genus: the species has been described, but nobody has seen it alive since.
No photograph of this species under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain is in the guide yet.
Identification
An epiphytic shrublet of ten to fifty centimetres, with a woody rootstock a few centimetres long and short, round stems three to four millimetres thick. What sets the species apart at once from its closest relatives is the hairiness: stem tips, leaves and pitchers carry white hairs up to a millimetre long. The leaves are papery, oblong-elliptic, mostly 11.5 to 13 cm long and 2 to 3 cm wide, with a winged petiole clasping half the stem. Only upper pitchers are known: ellipsoid below, constricted at the middle to about 1.6 cm and a little wider above, 6 to 11 cm tall, with distinct fringed wings. The peristome is narrow, 1 to 1.5 mm, round in section and without teeth; the lid is orbicular, about two centimetres, and the spur behind the lid is simple, pointed and hairy. Inflorescences and fruits are unknown.
Similar species
The species belongs to the group around Nepenthes micramphora, small Mindanao pitcher plants with round lids and dense nectar glands. Nepenthes micramphora itself is glabrous, has funnel-shaped upper pitchers without wings and grows on the ground. Nepenthes abgracilis, the other species described in the same paper, is larger, glabrous and has pitchers of over sixteen centimetres. Hairy stems and leaves, upper pitchers constricted at the middle and well-developed fringed wings would therefore make Nepenthes cid recognisable, should it ever be refound.
The trap and how it works
Only the upper pitchers of this species are known, and they are small: a pitfall of at most eleven centimetres with a narrow mouth. The principle is that of the whole genus. The peristome is ribbed, three ribs per millimetre, and turns slippery when a film of water lies on it; the inner edge is rolled in and carries a row of holes, the openings of nectar glands. Under the lid lie large, round nectar glands, one and a half to three per square millimetre, luring insects to the rim. Because the pitchers hang from an epiphyte high in a tree, prey is presumably mainly flying or walking along branches; ants, which populate many tree crowns, are an obvious candidate, but observations are lacking.
Habitat and ecology
The label records lower submontane forest at about 770 m altitude, with the plant epiphytic on tall trees (B1). That is unusual for Mindanao: almost all the island's other pitcher plants grow mainly on the ground. An epiphyte in the crown of a tall tree is easily overlooked, which may explain why the species has never been collected again. Little can be said about soil for an epiphyte; the plant lives on rain, moss and what its pitchers catch.
Distribution and elevation
Endemic to Mindanao and known only from the type locality, Dalwangan in Bukidnon province in the north of central Mindanao. The label 'Mindanao' in our species list can therefore be narrowed to Bukidnon. The area around Dalwangan lies on the plateau near Malaybalay, which was largely brought under cultivation in the second half of the twentieth century, among other things for pineapple plantations.
- Native
Forms and variation
For a species resting on a single collection no variation is known. The herbarium material shows some spread in size: the smallest upper pitchers are 4.5 cm, the largest 11 cm, and the leaves range from 9 to 14 cm. Whether plants differ in colour nobody knows; the label carries no colour notes. No natural hybrids are known.
Where and when to see it
There is no place where you can go and see this species. Anyone walking in the forests of Bukidnon can still help: look up, for small hairy pitcher plants in the crowns of tall trees in remaining forest around 700 to 800 m. A record with good photographs of pitcher, lid and the hairy leaves would be the first in more than sixty years and is valuable to science; report such a find to a Philippine herbarium or university and leave the plant where it is.
Conservation status
The species has not yet been assessed by the IUCN (Not Evaluated). The authors themselves assessed it as Critically Endangered: fewer than ten plants were known, at a single site, in a landscape where forest has given way to pineapple plantations. Because it has not been collected since 1952, they do not rule out that it is already globally extinct. Like all Nepenthes it is listed in CITES Appendix II.
Scientific name
Nepenthes cid | Jebb & Cheek, 2013
Nepenthes cid was described in 2013 by Matthew Jebb and Martin Cheek. Bukidnon Province, Mindanao, Philippines, where the type material was collected in 1952 as an epiphyte on tall trees, at 770 m elevation. The specific epithet refers to F. Cid of the University of the Philippines herbarium, who collected the type specimen in 1952.
World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), via Plants of the World Online (POWO), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.