Trat (2)
2004: at the BKF in Bangkok Mr. Pooma told me that
together with M. Cheek they had found near Trat “some Nepenthes, probably N.
mirabilis”.
2006: Tom Kahl was in
One month later I also went to
Trat. I wasn’t able to contact Tom, and actually after publishing those photos
on the web he seems to have disappeared! But I found an old email where he was
revealing his intention to go to village X as some interesting dry specimens at
the BK herbarium in Bangkok where coming from that place. I asked the owner of
the internet cafè where village X was, he told me, and he also told me that as far
as he knew, the mokao moken was also growing on the mountains of Ko Chang, a very tourist island in front of Trat. In
Trat I was staying in a very nice, little guesthouse (Pop Guesthouse) and for
the first couple of days I explored the surrounding areas for about 15 km in
two directions without finding anything interesting. Tom’s email changed the
things. After some hitchhiking I soon reached village X. There I explored some
sandy, promising areas near a waterfall without good results. Then I asked,
without much hope, at a minimart, where I was buying a coke. “Oh, yes, Mokao
Moken!” they said, “but no here in village X, you must go to village Y !!”.
Village Y was just 3 km away. I started walking and immediately a man on a motorbike,
with a kid on the backseat, stopped asking me the usual “Where you go? Where
you go?”. I answered, also saying the words “mokao moken lin”. He gave me the
bucket he was holding and told me to seat behind the kid. I soon realized the
bucket was half-full of very big, live crabs.
Zigzagging, as the man was
trying to talk to me turning his head, we eventually reached an old
house/bar/restaurant on the roadside, where I was told to sit down and wait,
while another 4-5 ladies, girls and kids arrived laughing and showing me the
few English words they knew: “hallo”, “where you go”, “where you from”, “hallo”
and again “where you go” were the main themes of our conversation. After 10
minutes the motorbike man came back
with another two men, and one of them had a richer vocabulary. I explained him
my situation and he was very curious to know how the hell I knew that the mokao
was growing right there, in village Y, a 2 km area with 11 huts, 6 dogs and 1
little school !!! I told him and we left. We crossed the main road and I found
myself in a vary large, abandoned rice field of pure white sand. We crossed it
and we reached a small area where the trees had been saved from humans and they
were growing to form some forest and savannah like vegetation. The men went straight
in the deepest part of the forest, were I would have never thought I could find
Nepenthes.
Among the trees there was some
kind of empty spot, just enough to walk around for 4-5 metres. “Here”, they
said. I had seen the plants earlier than them actually, but I was still
wondering what species they were, if there were bigger ones around and why they
were growing there. Here is the only good photo I took: pic1. This was once again the proof that
mokao moken lin (at least N. smilesii and kampotiana) prefers to grow stunted
in shady habitats but where the water is still available, deep in the soil,
even in the dry weather, than growing healthy in full sun, where if they don’t
have some constant source of fresh water during the driest months they can die
within a short time. The second time I came to see the plants at village Y, I
realized that the biggest and healthiest plants, the ones that you see in the
photo, were like that because in that spot the sunlight was arriving directly
for many hours a day, as you can see. So there they had enough sun and probably
enough water deep underground to grow much better than the other specimens I
saw, which looked like they were dying from one day to the other. The soil was
pure sand covered with debris, as you can also see. The plants were about 15 in
total, so if they decide to dig another rice paddy over there, the whole colony
will disappear in a few days. I couldn’t find any pitcher or flower. But I’m
sure this wasn’t the place that Tom had found, as his plants were much bigger
and healthier.
So there are good
probabilities that this is not the only colony of this species around here. The
men told me that as far as they know that’s the only place around there were
they grow. We also went to the nearby school, where the mokao was said to grow
in the little forest behind the main building, but we found no plants. The
teacher told us that they were probably dead. I don’t know. The crab-man
brought me back. On the way he insisted asking me to sleep over there, that I
was his friend and guest, he stopped to some friend’s hut where they all
laughed together and offered me some whisky. I know why they were laughing. Not
for me this time, but for him. This man had the strange habit of …shouting!
Yes, he was just shouting every word he used to say.
At first, for a few seconds, I
thought he was excited and extroverted, but then I realized he was probably
deaf. You have to imagine this man who, since the beginning of this story, was
talking to me shouting and shouting every concept. So I used to shout as well,
sometimes in Italian (he couldn’t speak English anyway). Something like
“Frieeeend!!! You Frieeend!!!! Sleeeep!!!! Sleeeeep!!!!” and I was like “What
the f..k are you shoutiiiiing!!!! I am not deeeeaaaaf!!!!!”, even if with a
smile on my mouth, or also “Che ca..o griiiidiiiii!!!!”, which is the same in
Italian. Of course everybody around us was laughing like crazy, especially
because they probably knew he had this problem. He also brought me to a friend
of him, a policeman (here in Thailand they are incredibly proud when they can
say they are policemen or that some of their friends is a policeman, it’s like
being the priest, the doctor or the major in our little European villages), who
was sleeping on a hammock. My dear mate started shouting to wake him up and I
could just understand the words “Faraaaaang!!!” and “Mokao ‘ken liiiin!!!!!”.
The man after a few seconds
(yes, not immediately, he was probably in the deepest REM phase) woke up but of
course wasn’t of any help. My noisy friend brought me back to the bus stop and
I took a songtaew to go back downtown. Oh, by the way, when I went back to
One month after the first
visit I went back to village Y to see the plants and to see if I could find
some more in the neighbourhoods. I couldn’t find any. Every time I asked around
where I could find some mokao, even if I was 4-5 km from village Y, everybody
used to indicate the same location where I had already been. Probably Tom found
the plants in a completely different area, many kilometres far from there.
Maybe at 100 mt altitude?
While staying in Trat I also
went to Ko Chang. There I found some Nepenthes that
were very similar to the plants in village Y. I say this because what the
plants from these two places have in common is the small size of the pitchers,
the same peculiarity of the dry specimens at BK.
2007: I went back to
see the plants at village Y. They were less in number and also seemed even more
stressed than the previous year. The trees and low bushes all around had grown thicker,
and the amount of light was so quite diminished. I also went to see the three
plants that, as I had seen last year, were growing about twenty metres far from
there. They looked much better, the biggest one being around 1.5 metres long.
Like the plants in Ko Chang they were growing here
with the base of the stem in the shade of the forest, while most of the leaves
were coming out of the low vegetation to get exposed to the full sunlight,
where some robust flowers were now at the end of their life cycle. Like in Ko Chang these exposed and flowering plants were all
males, while the only plants in flower at the other shady place were all
females. I went back to the main road, I walked for 2-3 km and I asked again. I
was still looking for the Tom Kahl and BK locations. I found a small family
doing nothing outside of a hut. The oldest one of them, a man who was maybe
about sixty years old, took my problem quite personally and invited me to jump
on his old motorbike with sidecar, probably used to bring food at the market.
We stopped five times at five different places to ask five different people.
Eventually we found some plants, but they were just N. mirabilis. They were
growing in the forest near a rice field. The whole area had been burnt,
probably to leave space to some more rice. The plants, nearly four metres tall,
climbing on the black ashes of the surrounding vegetation, were light green and
somehow they looked stew. The only place in the area that arrives to 100 mt
altitude is near the waterfalls at village X. But I was there in 2006, I found
nothing and everybody told me that the mokao grows just at village Y. I didn’t
check the deep forest though, but just the open, sandy area at the base of the
waterfalls. If these plants are growing in the same situation I saw at Ko Chang, probably I’ll have to climb the mountain, up
to 100 metres, and see if I can find any clearing there. Tom Kahl wrote me that
the plants he found were in a “private property”, without adding any further
detail. UPDATE DECEMBER 2007: here
for you some photos of the cuttings I took at village Y in January 2007. Now
they are healthy, promising plants, males and females, and could represent the
last opportunity we have to preserve the plants from that location. I left the
photos at the original size, so you can magnify them much more and check the
details you need (hair, shape, colour etc): photo1,
photo2, photo3.
Please note how the leaves are completely hairless, despite those little white
lines that are actually “painted” on them, while the tendrils and pitchers are
very slightly hairy. The lid is round, or apple-shaped. These plants are now
considered by Martin Cheek to be N. kampotiana, a species that extends from
Trat, going all along the coast up to Kampot and from there down to southern
