Citation breadcrumbs, part 3

Closing in on our (plant) suspect

A convenient index of this mini detective series.

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In the first two parts of our series, we picked a random Silverweed from the Kew Garden’s web page of all recorded species.

Citation Breadcrumbs, part 1

We sleuthed our way to a disappointing (Latin) description of Argentina sumatrana, learning a bit about the lives of some botanists who have chosen to intertwine their lives with this plant.

Citation Breadcrumbs, part 2

We could close our case now and hang up our magnifying glass; there are many more plant descriptions and pictures to be traced. There’s a pretty decent description of the plant (flower, stem, leaf) from which we could probably reconstruct a fair likeness - that’s good enough right? Deep down, though, we know that if we walk away we’ll come to think of this case as the one that got away.

The unsolved case.

Let’s forge on.

A good bet would be tracing down the botanical field trips of the aforementioned de Wilde and Wilde-Dufjes duo. What I found was an article entitled

Brief history of the botanical exploration in the Gunung Leuser Natural Park and vicinity, North Sumatra With itineraries and reports of the exploration tours by Van Steenis (1937) and De Wilde & Duyfjes (1972-1991)

Very useful indeed! The couple reviewed all the field trips in the area mentioned in the paper we finished on in the previous article of this series. I’ll repeat it here

Sumatra, Atjeh, Gunung Leuser Nature Reserve: 10 km NE of kampung Seldok (Alas valley), de Wilde et de Wilde-Duyfjes 15216

Let’s dig a bit further.

There’s a list of people who’ve explored this area, which is great, but more importantly, they talk about their specific trips to this area from 1972 through to 1991 - a total of 5 trips. They collected more than 9600 samples during these visits. Their detailed account of this begins on page 272. If we examine the exact number in the above quote, we see it is 15216, and if we read carefully, we see that number ranges are given, each one denoting one species that was recorded. On page 277, we see the title

Second Mount Bandahara expedition; 19 Feb.—5 Mar. — Fig. 4

Total numbers of collections: 593; nos. 14870-15463

This looks to be the right expedition. A bit further up, we see that the duo made this trip in 1975. We are told that the specimen that Sojak examined to classify P. sumatrana (which he later reclassified to A. sumatrana) was found “10 km NE of kampung Seldok (Alas valley)”. I’ve helpfully reproduced the figure of this 1975 expedition and highlighted what I think is the rough region where this plant was discovered, for fun

Each black dot was a camp site that the de Wilde duo made as they undertook their field trip - bread crumbs if I ever saw one.

We’re told that specific details of this trip are recorded in the following paper

Jacobs, M.J. & W.J.J.O. de Wilde. 1976. Botanical exploration in the Gunung Leuser Nature Reserves (Aceh, Indonesia). Malayan Nat. J. 29, 4: 315-322.

The Malayan Nature Journal has the worst designed journal website I’ve ever seen. The volume listing page doesn’t work (it requires you to create an account to even see that it doesn’t work) but they do offer the alleged back archives for a certain price - though I’m not sure I would take their word for it as I can’t even see the abstracts. What if I buy the wrong one?

Let’s back out of this dead end alley and keep analysing the review of the field trips in this area. There are some photographs, and in particular photograph 4 on page 274 looks promising. Various descriptions of photograph 4 are scattered through this article, but we strike some gold on page 275

White-flowering Parnassia aff. wightiana (from the Himalaya region) was found sporadically on wet places with Sphagnum over peat soil with moving ground water. Only known from the Mt Leuser top area at 2800-3000 m. The cordate leaves are of Parnassia, the pinnate [feather-like] leaves of Potentilla borneensi

So I hear you saying, why is he talking about Potentilla borneensi? Has this case finally made him lose the plot (maybe) - will any innocent suspect do?

Not so fast! Let me take you back to the paper in which Sojak classified Potentilla sumatrana in the first place, back before he reclassified it to Argentina sumatrana. Read it carefully and you’ll note this paragraph

Potentilla sumatrana has hairy achenes, which is a feature being shared with P. borneensis (Stapf) Kalkrn. That is the reason why Kalkman (1968) failed to recognize this species. Potentilla sumatrana, however, is not a relative of P. borneensis

So someone called Kalkman, in 1968, failed to pick P. sumatrana from a line up of P. borneensis. In other words, this photograph 4 is the first time we’ve managed to locate an image of the leaves of a plant that looks so similar to A. sumatrana that a fellow botanist failed to make the distinction! And an image of something that isn’t just a dead pressed photograph, to boot!

Lurking below the white, five petal flowers of Parnassia wightiana are the leaves of Argentina borneensis - a plant that is allegedly very similar to Argentina sumatrana

So we have a black and white photograph of the leaf, can we find a full colour photograph of the plant?

Tune in next time for the exciting final instalment!