Hunting for Porpax and Nepenthes at Langkawi

1. About a month ago friends from Langkawi emailed Prof. Che Aziz of Lestari several pictures of an amazing orchid and monkey cup from Gunung Machinchang. Subsequently Prof Che Aziz emailed me and I was so excited to view an orchid which I have never seen before and a new record of monkey cup from Langkawi. In 1981 I collected Nepenthes mirabilis from Kubang Badak paddy field, the only known nepenthes species from this archipelago.

2. On 15th January accompanied by Prof. Che Aziz and Ku Ismadi we took the cable car and alighted at the middle station and walked up to the top station through the valleys and boggy forests. We came across stands of Vatica cinerea (Dipterocarpaceae), climbing bamboo, Dinochloa malayana, Livistona ?saribus (Palmae), an elegant Hoya, many other palms and gingers and many other trees, shrubs and herbs.

3. We came to a place where Ku Ismadi observed and photographed Porpax elwisii (Orchidaceae) and we started our hunt for it. We did for about half-an-hour and despair started to creep in our mind, until Prof. Che Aziz took his camera to photograph a lichen, Parmotrema sp. and inside the screen there appeared the amazing green pseudobulbs of the orchid. The top of pseudobulb has radiating white lines; the 1- to 2-leaves have dried and one pinkish flower was also drying. No wonder we had tough times to locate the orchids .....the populations were drying!

4. Then we climbed upwards a hill and came to one of the many summits and we were welcomed by stands of Nepenthes sanguinea, the new record for Langkawi. We collected some specimens and took many pictures. The hill has many more orchid species of Dendrobium. Bulbophyllum and others but most are sterile ....not the flowering time! We were delighted with our finds.

5. The next two days I went hunting for N. mirabilis where I collected some 30 years ago at Kubang Badak. We were met with cows and buffaloes grazing there. We saw sparse vegetation and the leaves of Licuala spinosa were grazed by the buffaloes. We searched and searched and failed to find a stand of it. We asked the locals and still we could not locate it. The area has changed to orchards of bananas. mangoes and rambutans etc. According to the locals, once upon a time there were scattered populations but now they seem gone. I was frustrated as I think I have witnesses a local extinction of N. mirabilis in Langkawi. Ku Ismadi promised to look for it and deep in my mind .....it is still there.