Nepenthes samar

[marcel]

The paperwork on Nepenthes samar is now available for free download.

dx.doi.org/10.3767/000651913X673513

Like other recent work of Cheek and Jebb it is only based on herbarium specimens and there is no picture or drawing for the lower pitcher though they claim that the species produces mainly upper pitchers which I think is quite a statement if you haven't seen the plant in the wild.
I'm no Nepenthes expert and I will leave it to the experts to have a scientifically valid opinion on this, but it feels not good to me.
What a shame that two basically good botanists are apparently working their way through every herbarium specimen they can get their hands on without going into the field or cooperate with those who do.

[Sockhom]

Thanks for the link, Marcel. I just wrote some blogging on N. samar and the freshly described N. viridis (yes, there is a new species of Nepenthes every month these days ;-) that some of you might find of interest:
carnivorousockhom.blogspot.fr/2013/10/nepenthes-samar-and-n-viridis-two-new.html

Cheers,

François.

[leeb]

I couldn't comment on your site François so I will comment here.
I agree with you that doing Nepenthes taxonomy using only herbarium specimens is not much use, but neither is comparing new species to dated taxonomic concepts that include more than one species.
The N. alata group needs to be revised by looking at specimens from all the Philippine islands and working out how many species are actually there; then using herbarium specimens to determine the names to apply to them.
Where herbarium specimens are not available new neotypes need to be designated, but from the type location or as near to it as possible.

And if people want to publish quickly and make their work widely available they might want to look at open access journals like PLoS One or PeerJ.
The publication on a juvenile Parasaurolophus specimen in PeerJ in the last few days shows the level of detail that can be put in a good online journal, and the comments by the authors online show just how quickly they can be published.

LeeB.