Introduction

This website looks like a book. And it could become a book. But even if we don’t consider Thailand as the main theme, and we include the rest of Indochina, still the book will include just about seven species. That’s not a lot, compared to other Nepenthes home countries such as Borneo or Malaysia. But who knows, maybe one day…

A few words about conservation

A lot of Nepenthes species are in danger. They will soon disappear, and some of them already did, because of deforestation and illegal poaching. In the case of Thailand, the 50 % of forests have been destroyed in the last 40 years because of the increasing population, increasing plantations and increasing civilized areas. One thing lead to the other (yes, we definitely increase too much). Maybe that’s the reason why highland Nepenthes are so widespread in this Country: the mountains are usually not cultivated. And you’ll notice how in the north and north-east, where most of the mountains are, the latter are all national parks. Yes, they couldn’t be cultivated, so they have been more easily preserved. But pitcher plants from the lowlands decreased. We are talking about N. mirabilis, gracilis and ampullaria, all very common species out of Thailand (and yet that’s not a valid reason to make them disappear IN Thailand). But we’re also talking about N. thorelii and probably other new species, which could disappear for ever from the face of our planet.

Please, after reading these pages, if you get interested in these plants, don’t go and collect them in the wild. Take pictures, a few seeds and maybe a couple of cuttings, and leave the mother plants where they are. If these plants become more available in cultivation through affordable sources, we will stop the black market and in the future maybe we’ll be able to introduce them back in their sites of origin. While if we collect a whole plant, we do something very bad and if it dies we’re just contributing to its extinction.

In the last few years Borneo Exotics, a nursery based in Sri Lanka and owned by Robert Cantley and Diana Williams, started to produce millions of Nepenthes plants. They became the biggest wholesale producer of different Nepenthes species on the market, distributing them to the most important cp nurseries and botanic gardens all over the world. Their main target is in fact conservation through cultivation. Their website is www.borneoexotics.com. I worked three months in their nurseries, and you can see more than 100 photos of their plants together with an article about my experience here. A few other smaller nurseries are also involved in the conservation of these plants, they supply most of the growers all around the globe and they carefully keep all the data they have about the clones they grow and sell. As far as I can, I’ll try to give seeds and/or cuttings of the rarest Indochinese species to some of these sources. In this way we'll be able to spread these plants in cultivation with no more confusion, with the right label, right original location and through affordable sources. Please contact me if you have a strange Nepenthes plant or the picture of a plant from Indochina and you're not sure about its identity.