Ludisia ravanii untold

November 10, 2007- While admiring a population of Crepidium bancanoides on the forest floor in a national park in eastern Luzon, I heard one of my companions, Ernie Alvaran, summoning me. "Ludisia!" he yelled. When he said the word I knew we're onto something. Merlin Sy, another companion, found more plants. During this time, the genus Ludisia was monotypic, or consisting of only one species, L. discolor. The species is widespread and occurs from India eastwards to Indochina and southwards to Indonesia. There is a record from Palawan but it seems that no one has found the plants since. So if what Ernie found was L. discolor, then that would be the first record of this species occurring on Luzon. While taking photos of some of the plants, which were sterile, Ernie told me that earlier that month he saw and bought a few plants that were said to have come from central Luzon, bearing the same small leaves of the plants before us. At that moment I was thinking of 'Doris Stein'. The cultivar 'Doris Stein' is the one that figures prominently in cultivation, due to the larger leaves and flowers, but the blooms aren't fragrant. Could the ones before us the 'true' wild form of L. discolor? I informed Jim Cootes of the discovery which started a chain of emails discussing the plants that Ernie and I found. The following year, Jim arrived in the Philippines and on July 31, 2008, I, together with other like-minded people, took Jim to where we found the plants. By this time I was almost at the point of certainty that what Ernie and Merlin found about half a year earlier was a still undescribed species. I only needed to see the flower as the final nail in the coffin.

By August of 2008, I finally saw one in bloom, which totally eliminated L. discolor out of the picture. Ernie informed me that his plants were in flower too. I sent Jim a photo and both of us suspected that it could indeed be a new, undescribed species. He forwarded the photo to Paul Ormerod, who confirmed that indeed, we have a second species; Ludisia won't be monotypic any longer. I thought of giving it the name Ludisia inexpectata, but Jim gave what I thought was a better name: L. striata as an allusion to the striped segments. During that same month, I started taking measurements and prepared the description paper for our new species. When Jim arrived again, I handed him the preserved material. However, he lost the supposed-to-be type specimen. The description and publication for L. striata had to be shelved in the meantime. A few years later, in 2011, our German friend Ravan Schneider found the same plants in Oriental Mindoro. Finally, the lost specimens had been replaced. I intended to merge the description of these plants with those I previously made, but as it turned out, my draft was one of those that got deleted after my computer system crashed a few years earlier.

By March 2013 I received a message from Jim asking me if I am still interested in being one of the authors for the now renamed Ludisia ravanii (Ravan insisted that the plant be named after him); Jim was aware of my aversion to naming plants after people, although not totally as my publications of Coelogyne salvaneraniana, Mycaranthes leonardoi (with botanist Ulysses Ferreras) and Thrixspermum cootesii prove. My only criterion is that the person involved should have direct involvement with the plant one way or the other, and that the practice should be sparingly used. There are people who abuse this route by having plants constantly named after them or name plants after people who absolutely had nothing to do with the plant, or even orchids for that matter. Nevertheless, because Ravan is a friend and he is directly involved in the species' subsequent description, I did not mind being an author to another plant bearing a person's name. But I left the decision to Jim as I was aware of my negligible contribution (mostly involving altitudinal distribution and phenology) because, as already mentioned above, I lost my draft for the protologue. A few months later and I discovered that the paper had been published, by Jim Cootes and George Tiong. I must admit, I felt a sting. Not because Jim excluded me from being one of the authors (remember, I left the decision to him), but because in the published protologue it was made to appear that the actual discovery only took place at the time of Jim's visit to the habitat, on July 31, 2008. Thus, the contribution of people who were there at the time of the actual discovery, as well as their observations, were left out. To begin with, I am not an authorship hog, unlike people who are in this kind of thing almost purely for their perceived future legacy (which also explains why there are people who want to have new species named after them on a very regular basis, because they want to be 'remembered') or because being one of the authors will boost their careers, being in the academe or botanical institution. I don't fall for that kind of vanity, but I do believe in giving credit to where credit is due. What so often happens nowadays is that people go beyond the thrill of sharing their discovery to the world and instead do this for the recognition and the applause. Many times I heard stories of people fast-tracking their description of a new species only because they found out that the same species is being described by someone who found it first. Quality of the protologue goes out of the window; what matters is that the name gets published ASAP and it's another feather to the cap for the authors followed by congratulatory greetings for a job well done from people who don't know the entire story.

Above and below: Screenshots of a pdf copy of the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society of the Philippines newsletter, where a report of my second visit to the Ludisia habitat was featured. 

Was my relationship with Jim affected after that? I see no reason why it should, but of course, the memory stayed. And if truth be told, I never discussed it to him until only quite recently. But at that point, we have already ceased to describe new species together as I found more contentment in other matters while Jim continued to do Jim ways. So yes, in a way, I have changed. It has been quite a while since I last involved myself in formally describing a species (the last I believe was Nepenthes aenigma. Or was it N. nebularum?) and have no intention of going through all the trouble of working on a description, at least for this moment in time; somehow I lost the taste for it. For now, I am just contented to be a regular gardener and blogger- and giving credit to where credit is due. I could have discovered these plants even without Ernie or Merlin around, and made my observations without the help of the former, however minor as some would argue. But as you now know, that is not how the story of this orchid unfolded.

In bloom.