Re: Nepenthes in Sci. Amer.

John Taylor [The Banshee] (rphjt@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU)
Mon, 21 Mar 94 22:33:53 DST

>From: Walter L Greenwood <wlg1+@pitt.edu>
> The current (April '94) issue of Scientific American contains an
> enormous advertising section all about Malaysia. On page M-57 (page # is
> not marked), there is a small photograph of a rather non-spectacular
> green upper pitcher - looks like N. reinwardtiana or alata or something
> similar. (anyone care to positively ID it?)...

There was also an article on Nepenthes a few years back in either Sci.Amer.
or New Scientist (I think it's still lurking around here somewhere...)

>I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I just can't forget
>that this is the same government who sold Pig Hill out of Sabah Park for
>development, denied botanists and collectors any chance to rescue the N.
>rajah, then dynamited the hillside to build a golf course or a parking
>lot or whatever the hell it is now, destroying not only hundreds of N.
>rajah, but also a colony of N. burbidgeae and the huge, gorgeous, and
>probably now extinct, hybrid between the two. If anyone out there knows
>any more than this about what really happened there, please let us in on
>it.

Hmmm... Sounds a lot like the company who dynamited one of the prime
roosting caves in Queensland of the rare Ghost Bat just for limestone...

I've read recently (the latest Wild magazine in fact) that (Q) "the Malaysian
government uses military force to break up any resistance to logging...At
Sarawak last year, 300 soldiers, police, logging-company employees and
forestry officials brutally broke down a peaceful blockade intended to slow
down the logging of one of the last tribes of nomadic hunter-gatherers on
earth" (UQ) - and Nepethes too probably...

BTW, I've decided to give Nepenthes another chance - I've just bought a
couple of small ex-cutting plants (N. alata + N. tobaica green-form) and
I'm trying to grow them in a heated terrarium kept constantly at about 23oC
with a 20W NEC Biolux fluoro around 4-5" above them (about 9 hours a day).

>All you fellow Miata owners out there: Top-down weather is on it's way.
>Spring cleaning time in the greenhouse!

Don't forget the Moke owners!! :-) No cushy carpets or air-conditioning!

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| John Taylor [The Banshee] | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology |
| rphjt@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au | Department of Applied Physics |
| MOKING IS A HEALTH HAZARD. | Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA |
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