The red variant of Nepenthes mirabilis and some musing on Nepenthes taxonomy.

I did not post a lot of articles dedicated to my cultivated lowland Nepenthes these last years (apart from the recent Nepenthes madagascariensis ones). I will try to change this from now on. Here is a plant that is currently doing fairly well for me: a Nepenthes mirabilisvariant withred pitchers. I've got this plant from my friend Kamil Pasek's well known nursery: Best Carnivorous Plants. I have always liked this variant since I first laid my eye on it on a page of Charles Clarke's famous Nepenthes of Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia. The plant is currently growing in a 9 cm square pot. It is more than 60 cm tall and is developing an offshoot. Time to repot it very soon I guess!

I have always been interested by the N. mirabilis group, an informal unit that is currently composed of the following taxa:

There is a lot to discuss about this group. I think for instance that N. mirabilis var. echinostoma should be seen as a species in its own right as it was originally described. It is also my conviction that N. mirabilis var. globosa should also been regarded as a good species. On the other hand, I have high reservation about N. parvula; the thorough reading of its description makes me think it is nothing more than an ecoptype. However, I guess we'll eventually know more about this late taxon in the future and more field study by Nepenthes experts will prove whether my views are right or not.

But, to be honest though, I'm a bit fed up with Nepenthes taxonomy these days. There has a been a lot of new species published that left me  almost in distress. :-/

Here is a selection:

- A lengthy list of obscure Filipino taxa published by Martin Cheek and Matthew Jebb. While a few seem legit, the vast majority is very questionable to me. 

-The controversial Nepenthes nebularum, a plant that would be one of the putative parents of the well known N. robcantleyi that would turn out to be a hybrid between N. nebularum and N. truncata, an interpretation I don't support.

- The publication of N. minima that would be a kind of comic counterpart of the also well know Nepenthes maxima.

-The aforementionned Nepenthes parvula;

-The addition of another confusing so-called Thai endemic, Nepenthes krabiensis, a species very closed to Nepenthes rosea, another obscure species in itself. 

-And the very recently far-fetched description of Nepenthes tayninhensis, which is nothing else than the Nepenthes thorelii found in Vietnam, in Lo Go Xa Mat National Park in 2011! The epithete N. thorelii, in that perspective, would designate the plants currently known as... Nepenthes kampotiana! That late name would be 'deleted'.

I am not going to thoroughly express here what I am thinking about each of these so-called new species. I have no incentive for this, it's getting me bored and if I have to do so one day, I will do it in a proper paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. ;-)

Still, I really hope, like most of you Nepenthes aficionado that someone will someday take on the herculean task to produce a clear revision. Hopefully, this will be undertaken by a group of experts that are not involved in the poor papers mentioned above. We'll see.