Stewart McPherson recently released a short documentary (~30 minutes) on the rediscovery of Nepenthes paniculata. It's a good overview of the effort that goes into traveling to a remote area and attempting to find a specific plant species without exact directions. (It's a difficult endeavor).
As you'll learn in the documentary, N. paniculata had originally been discovered by a Dutch expedition, but was only relocated in August 2013 by McPherson's team. It has only just entered cultivation.
Overall, the documentary is good. McPherson has a good, listenable voice for a documentarian. And , it's certainly worth a weekend viewing, but be warned that the narration is very Eurocentric. There are definitely a few instances where the language used by McPherson-as-narrator could have been more balanced. For instance, the local guides who go out to find firewood end up discovering the first specimens of N. paniculata and - recognizing that those plants were different - bring them back to camp to show McPherson and co., who identify them at N. paniculata. The next few sentences out of McPherson-as-narrator's mouth are to the effect of 'These guides must think we're crazy, looking at these plants which, to them, all look the same.' I thought that projecting the sameness of the plants on the guides was a bit odd in light of their discovery.
Let me know what you thought in the comments below.
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