Re: Re:

Jan Schlauer (zxmsl01@studserv.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de)
Fri, 7 Jan 1994 20:54:15 +0100

Andreas, you wrote:
>By the way:
>I do not think the plant which has been collected by William
>Baumgartl is H. ionasii.
>The type of H. ionasii has very prominent hair (up to 5mm) in the
>upper part of the pitchers mouth. Further the pitchers are almost
>trumpet-like in the upper part while the plant collected by William
>Baumgartl has quite slender, erect pitchers and very short hair. I
>think it's exactly the Heliamphora pictured in Charles Brewer-Carias'
>Book: The Lost World of Venezuela and its Vegetation (If anyone is
>interested I'll look for the ISBN) which was photographed on Tramen
>Tepui. In fact Tramen and Ilu have the same Base and are only
>distinct peaks of the same mountain.
>
>Jan, what's your opinion about this?

I do not know the whole range of variability of _H.ionasii_, nor does it
seem too probable that _H.nutans_ (which may have pitchers rather similar
to those of the Tramen-tepui plant) should have reached the Ilu-massif. So
what I can say at the moment, you might be right with your assumption of a
new whatsoever-taxon (I'm not too happy with specific rank in
_Heliamphora_: too many "species" had to be lumped together after their
variability became evident). Perhaps you should consider varietal rank. OK,
if the plant really was closer to _H.nutans_ than to _H.ionasii_ (which I
cannot decide for reasons stated above), ssp. would be better than var.
because of geographic rather than genetic isolation, but as the same holds
true for _H.tatei_neblinae_ and nevertheless STEYERMARK did use var., this
rank would be in conformity with current infraspecific classification in
_Heliamphora_.

Do you have specimens of both, _H.ionasii_ and the Tramen-tepui plant?

Kind regards
Jan