On the "Skeletal Revision of Nepenthes" by
Cheek and Jebb (1997), in the N. anamensis description, you can read that one
of the type specimens came from this area. Whether or not the plant from
Kanchanadit is a true N. smilesii (anamensis), we don’t know.
2006: at the BK herbarium in Bangkok I found a specimen
coming from Kanchanadit (found in 1927, the same specimen they refer to in the
Cheek and Jebb Revision), but its identification is problematic: pic1. It could be N. smilesii, but considering
how many strange plants in Thailand have the same kind
of narrow leaves, we can’t be sure. The altitude indicated on the specimen is
“1.5 m”. Is that 1500 mt? Is there any mountain in Kanchanadit that reaches the
1500 mt? I don’t know. If that is N. smilesii, it seems to grow quite far from
its usual range in the north-eastern region. I went to Kanchanadit, but it was
just before seeing the specimen in Bangkok, so I didn’t know anything
about the altitude. I had heard the name of that city a few other times, so I
was expecting at least a small town. But when I arrived at the bus station and
I asked where the centre of the town was, they were not able to give me any
answer. THAT was the centre! Kanchanadit is a veeeery small town, actually just
one road of maybe 500 metres. There are no true secondary roads. I found a
completely empty resort (7 rooms, one next to the others like little attached
villas), where the only other guest in three days was a prostitute with her
many customers. I spoke and smoke some cigarettes with the hotel owner, a very
kind and extroverted man. Of course the main argument was the mokao moken lin. The man told me that they grow around Kham Son, not
exactly a national park but some kind of wildlife reserve. He called a friend
who knew where to find them, but before loosing time and money, I asked him to
see the mokao he was growing at home, as it was coming from Kham Son. We went
by motorbike to his place and he showed me a couple of very healthy specimens
of N. mirabilis. So I cancelled Kham Son from my list. Kanchanadit is in fact
rounded by many national parks, and I had to be quick. The following day I went
to Nam Tok Si Khit. I reached it with one bus and two lifts. The last lift was
given to me by a group of very kind guys with good English. I told them all
about my research, of course they felt involved and brought me to the park
headquarter and spoke with the staff for me. So I was giving directions to my
friends, and they were giving them to the park staff. Quite
effective. There’s no mokao in Nam Tok Si Khit, but they called the Tai
Rom Yen and Khao Nan parks. The staff from Khao Nan gave a positive answer. My
English speaking friends of course suggested me to renounce to go there that
same day, as it was too late. And of course I ignored their suggestion, so they
kindly brought me to the bus stop for Khao Nan. The bus left me at the
beginning of the secondary road that brings to the park, while a gentleman gave
me a lift to the headquarters. Here I asked for mokao moken lin
and the staff quickly showed me the few N. mirabilis growing, together with a
lot of forked ferns, on the vertical rock wall just behind their office. I
asked them if it was growing somewhere else in the park, they said no and I
left, as it was already 4:30 pm. I got another
lift to the main road and here I waited for one hour the bus to Kanchanadit,
which I reached at the sunset. The following day I tried with Kham Son, that I
reached with a minibus and then with a final lift. The man who gave me the lift
explained me how this area has a road that goes all around it. I took that very
long road, but eventually I didn’t arrive back where I had started. Instead, I
reached a small town, where I asked about Kham Son and mokao moken lin. Everybody told me that Kham Son was the place where I
already was at the moment, and they were sure about the absence of Nepenthes in
the whole area. I’ll tell you what has probably happened: I just did half of
the road around the park, the park and the village next to it have the same
name, maybe the mokao grows on the other side where I haven’t been, and - as it
always happens - thai people who never saw Nepenthes there, and who probably
never even tried to look for it, are indeed sure that Nepenthes doesn’t grow
there. Once again, be careful if you do my same kind of research, when someone
here says “Don’t go! Don’t go! No Nepenthes here! I was born here! No
Nepenthes! I’m sure!!”, that means “I don’t know,
maybe”. I started walking in the Kanchanadit direction to find a lift, but the
owner of the place where I had just bought an ice-cream saw me and he thought
that my target was WALKING back to Kanchanadit! I let him think that, and after
5 minutes I heard him speaking with someone and using the words “Farang” and
“Kanchanadit”. Done. That someone was driving a car
and of course he stopped next to me saying “where you go?”, and you already
know what my answer was. Forty minutes later I was back home. So, not much around Kanchanadit this time. But the next time
I’ll go directly for a mountain that is at least 1500 mt high!
2007: this time I changed my
tactic and I went to Surat, the capital of
the Surat province, a few kilometres
from Kanchanadit. Sometimes in the main city you can find more tracks to follow
than in a lost village, even if it’s near the village that the plants have been
found. Surat is a very tourist place, full
of guesthouses, tourist agencies and farangs that will come here to spend a
couple of days before leaving for the nearby islands. I found a great
guesthouse called The Web. The clean room was just 100 bat (it was supposed to
be a small dormitory with some mattresses, but I was the only one there, so
there was just my mattress), downstairs
I had computers with internet and restaurant service at good prices. The place
is owned by a very intelligent American with a relaxed attitude and a good
sense of humour. I immediately felt like home. The door of my room was always
open, but I never felt like I could run any kind of risk. The first day, trying
to make my friend Eric Schlosser happy, I went to the Khun Thale Lake, where U. punctata
was supposed to grow. I was interested in that plant too,
don’t get me wrong; it’s an aquatic species with red flowers, it must
provide a good show on the water surface when in full bloom. On the most
accessible side of the lake I found nothing, so the following day I decided to
check the other side. I found a little boat with just one oar and I spent the
morning crossing the boggy, shallow lake in the middle, reaching the opposite
side and then going all along the right shore until I arrived back to the point
where I had found the boat. No trace of any Utricularia species, just thousands
of water lilies. And believe me, of course I checked
all the plants floating under the water surface. The man who helped me finding
the boat, who was selling drinks in front of the lake, also showed me some N.
mirabilis ha was growing at home and which had been collected somewhere behind
the lake by one of his friends. It could be that in some bog near the lake also
U. punctata was growing, but I had no car to go there, and we couldn’t find the
friend who could tell us exactly where to find the nepenthes, so I just gave up
and passed to my second but most important target: “Kanchanadit, Surat, 1.5 mt”. My brain found itself under a lot of stress for
months, trying to find the solution of this enigma. Eventually I had to decide:
it can’t be 1.5 metres, so it must be 1500. After a long time spent on the
internet I found a mountain called Khao Nay, 1535 metres high, in the Tay Rom
Yen national park. But I wasn’t sure if it was inside the Kanchanadit district
or just slightly out of it. I took the bus to Tai Rom Yen, and I found myself in
front of the usual scene: people laughing, making comments in Thai, who could
not speak English and who were trying to ignore me as long as they could “to
not get in trouble”; or “because they are shy” as they prefer to say here. But
I’m used to that. I managed to find an album of photos of Khao Nay, but there
were maybe 50 pictures of people just smiling, mounting their tends and having
lunch in front of the fire. No plants or anything else. After about a hour one of the girls at the visitor centre made me speak
by phone with a lady who had good English. The lady, like the other girls did
many times, asked me twice if I wanted to go up to Khao Nay, and once again I
answered that I didn’t want to, I just wanted to know if the mountain was in
the Kanchanadit district or not. Finally she gave a negative answer. My job was
done and I left. Now I was alone in front of the
problem “Kanchanadit, 1.5 mt”. But the time of the “great brainwave” was
getting closer, even if I had no idea about it. Back at the guesthouse I spent
one more hour on the web. I was looking for anything regarding Kerr, the
botanist who had found the specimen. Among the other ideas, I had also been
confused by the eventuality that the borders of provinces and district could
have changed in 50-70 years, and because of that I found myself studying the
history of the Surat province, of the Kanchanadit district and not only!
Eventually I found a document. That crazy man (and great botanist!) called Kerr
used to write down the altitude of his specimens quite precisely, like “5 mt
above sea level”. So I had now some reason to believe that “1.5” could really
mean 1.5 metres and not 1500 mt. But even for Kerr those 50 centimetres were
too much! I went back to my room and I started walking in circle and thinking
for another hour. Then a small lightning crossed my brain. It was like an
elusive impression, something that my eyes had seen but my brain hadn’t
registered in the right drawer. I
stopped for a bit with my eyes pointing in the emptiness of the room. Then I
ran downstairs, back on the internet. That document that I had seen regarded a
plant found by Kerr right in Kanchanadit. And it had been found “c. 5 mt” above
sea level, the same year but just a few days earlier. Oh Jesus. I checked again
the Nepenthes specimen on my website, the same photo that you see on the fourth
line of this page. The small lightning became bigger and bigger, eventually
becoming the great brainwave. My
fingers moved incredibly fast and nervous when I went checking a few other
problematic specimens from my website. I was feeling like a baby the night
before Christmas. I wanted to jump and shout for joy. But people there couldn’t
understand. Looking at the other specimens I realized how there was no way to
be wrong, the solution was now clear and clear were now all the problematic
specimens. Kerr’s vary bad calligraphy was the reason of everything: what I
thought to be a “1” was a “c”! “C”! It means “circa”, Latin (and Italian) for
“about! The Kanchanadit specimen was now at about
5 mt altitude! The Bung
specimen at 100 mt and not 1100, the Adang
specimen at 500 mt and not 1500, the Khao Kuap
specimen at 600 mt and not 1600.
And I also found a few links referred to Chong Bat
Lak – another place I was looking for – with latitude and longitude. But
then I saw that I also had the same coordinates on the photo of the Nepenthes
specimen on my site, and I hadn’t seen them. I would be happy to call myself a
big stupid, as I had spent a whole day looking for Chong Bat Lak at the Khao
Phra Wiharn national park with no result, but eventually those coordinates
revealed to be wrong, or at least not anymore compatible with modern maps. The
following day I went to Kanchanadit. I knew that the national parks south of
Kancha had no Nepenthes, and I also knew that 5 mt altitude are quite low and
can be more likely found near the coast, north of Kancha. With a songtaew I
reached all the villages near the coast. But I didn’t even had to get off the
minibus, as I saw that only mangrove forests, shrimp farms and thick tropical
forests were filling the whole area, with no hope for any sandy savannah to
host the pitcher plants. I found myself once again with no tracks to follow.
When I think how often Nong and some Thai villagers speak about nepenthes “thorelii
tiger” coming from the Surat province and they don’t want to say
anything…These plants will end up being buried by the cement or being stolen by
the locals, before anyone can study and spread them in cultivation in the
proper way.
