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Hello all,

 

This is my first post on this forum.

Some of you may already know me as François Sockhom Mey, a carnivorous plant hobbyist and Nepenthes taxonomist. Incidently, I also have a soft spot for ant plants and have observed several of them in the course of my studies on the Nepenthes of Indochina and other parts of SE Asia.

 

Here are some pictures of some impressive specimens of Hydnophytum I found in southern Cambodia a few years ago:

 

cmp1.jpg
 
mbx2.jpg
 
nhmz.jpg

 

Some of them were huge, nearly twice the size of a football balloon!

 

Apparently only H. formicarum is known from Cambodia but there is a striking paucity of literature on this plant for the Indochinese peninsula so I am not sure if all Hydnophytum populations I observed i in Cambodia indeed fell within H. formicarum.

 

François.

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Hi Francois,

thank you very much for posting these pictures here. Yes, these were the ones you've shown me that I remembered. 

Very very impressive!

It certainly has a very high affinity with Hydnophytum formicarium. However, this species is so widespread and has such a big variability, that IMHO it deserves a closer look.

BTW, Beccari, named quite a number of forms, including a forma siamense:

 

post-1-0-97770100-1393080644_thumb.png

 

All the best

Andreas

 

 

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Hi Andreas,

 

Yes, it surely is very close to Hydnophytum formicarum and I shall refer to it in the meanwhile as H. cf. formicarum ;) .

Actually, I have observed about 5 or 6 populations of these plants in Cambodia. I will post some more pictures soon so we might debate on the identification of all these interesting plants!

 

Speak soon,

 

François.

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Thanks for sharing François!

Kew and J&H quote only H. formicarum in IndoChina, but I think also that some different species coul occur...

Perhaps H. formicarum is like the Jebb & Huxley concept of Myrmecodia tuberosa, really variable and ubiquistic species but I don't like this idea...

 

We grow quite similar species in Nancy's greenhouses:

https://picasaweb.google.com/115123529972931132238/HydnophytumSp19973309

 

It come from the island of Ko Chang (Thailand), well known for the recently described Nepenthes chang...

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