Quote:
Originally Posted by Betta Fantasy
Is Kongkandana names after someone 'Kong' ? Is this a species confirmed or still not sure and could be some wild hybrid. The pitcers resemble sanguinea but not the leaves.
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Hi Betta,
Glad you brought up these questions because there're many unknowns about the N. Tiger from Thailand particularly the ones from southern Thailand. All these studies are still on going so more data can be collected to formally describe the difference between the species. These tigers all looked very similar to a normal person like me...
Don't be surprise, you might already have an actual
N. kongkandana in your collection which is label as
N. thorelii spp or N. tiger... According to Marcello,
N. kongkandana might be wide spread among cultivation.
N. kongkandana was named after Dr. Kongkanda Chayamarit, Senior Botanist at the Forest Herbarium in Bangkok by Dr. Martin Cheek. The reason why I brought Marcello along for this trip is because he has been helping ppl like Dr. Martin Cheek and Stewart McPherson to scientifically catalouge and record the findings (including the species publication of
N. kongkandana) so that we can start to separate what is what among so many N. Tigers variety in Thailand... There must be easily up to 20 different Tigers (including the Giant Tigers) that I have seen in cultivation today. With the recent publication of
N. thai, I hope one day the name of N. Tiger will be a memorable history...
There's still not much information available online on
N. kongkandana since it's still very new, so far the most comprehensive description available is from Steward McPherson's "Pitcher Plants of the Old World" Vol One which was first printed in May of 2009. Still, more data need to be collected and I hope Mercello can use the findings from this trip to complete the task.
FYI, we stumbled upon this specimen on the way out of the forest... this
might be the natural hybrid of
N. kongkandana x mirabilis which only have uppers. So far, this is the only plant that we found that might be a natural hybrid
Robert,
Yes... N. mirabilis is very common... but what interest me the most is the suspected evolutionary link to N. viking in Thailand.... I'm still looking for that