Discovering New Species of Pitcher Plant in the Philippines - Stewart McPherson

At the Carnivorous Plant Society AGM, held on 21 April 2012, members were treated to a 25 minute video of Stewart McPherson's latest documentary:

Discovering New Species of Pitcher Plant in the Philippines

Stewart takes you on a journey of discovery on a previously unexplored mountain, Mount Anipahan, and then on to Mount Kiamo on Mindanao.  Enduring energy sapping difficult terrain the expedition proved fruitful unearthing one new pitcher plant, Nepenthes. spec. "Anipahan". The documentation also contains exclusive video footage of N. ceciliae and N. pulchra, two new pitcher plants recently discovered on a previous expedition by another group of Nepenthes enthusiasts.

The initial discovery of N. ceciliae and N. pulchra was made by Fulgent Coritico, a student of Dr. Victor Amoroso, who was unsure about them and showed Thomas Gronemeyer, Marius Micheler and David Marwinski at the Central Mindanao University. Thomas, Marius and David realised from dried specimens that they were probably looking at some new species and organized an expedition to Mount Kiamo, together with Fulgent. On Mount Kiamo, they also saw N. pulchra and realized that they had found not one, but two new species

The expedition did not yield further discoveries of the giant Nepenthes species Stewart discovered on previous trips to the Philippines, N. attenboroughii and N. palawanensis, but with the new plant found proved a huge success and the documentary provides a fabulous insight into the world of discovery.

If you would like to see the documentary, and I strongly urge that you do, it can be viewed free at: Discovering New Species of Pitcher Plant in the Philippines

N. pulchra

N. ceciliae

On behalf of the CPS I would like to thank Stewart for supplying us with a copy of the documentary, and for his continued great support.