AMORPHOPHALLUS INCURVATUS
PROTOLOGUE: Amorphophallus incurvatus Alderw., published in Bulletin du Jardin botanique de Buitenzorg sér. 3, 4: 166 (1922). The protologue is reproduced below.
DISTRIBUTION: Sumatera: Sumatra.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Type: Gunung Kerinci, in forest, 1,770 m — Bünnemeijer 8835, 15 March 1920. Route reconstruction places the collection on the south-southwestern flank, in the Sungai Siulak Deras Kanan drainage above Sako Duo, Kerinci Regency, Jambi Province.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Unknown
INFLORESCENCE:
Peduncle ±75 cm long, comparatively slender, green, spotted pale green. Spathe with a convolute, obconical base, boat-shaped, prolonged posteriorly, toward the apex sickle-shaped and curved inward over the spadix; when flattened ovate, ±11 cm long, 4.5 cm wide above the truncate-rounded base, apex acute; outside dingy violet, spotted pale green.Spadix ±7 cm long, brownish in the basal part, pale grey to nearly white in the apical part; female inflorescence cylindric, 1.75 cm long, ±4 mm thick when dry. Ovaries short, somewhat prismatic, 4-angled, truncate at the apex, 1-ovuled; style narrowly cylindric, slightly shorter than the ovary, scarcely conically thickened at the base; stigma capitate, small, slightly grooved.
Male inflorescence subcylindric, nearly 2.25 cm long, ±4 mm thick above the base when dry, slightly constricted at the apex and base; appendix subcylindric, ±3 cm long, ±4 mm thick when dry, slightly constricted at the base, rounded at the apex.
ECOLOGY:
Found in forest at an altitude of 1770 m
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin incurvatus, “curved inward” or “incurved,” referring to the characteristic spathe limb, which arches inward over the spadix in a sickle-like curve. This distinctive curvature is explicitly emphasized in the original description as falcato-incurvata, “sickle-shaped and incurved.”
STORY:
STORY TITLE: Bünnemeijer's Kerinci Expedition, 1920
In the spring of 1920, the Dutch plant collector Hendrik Albertus Bünnemeijer was deep in the mountains of central Sumatra, undertaking what would become one of the most productive collecting journeys of his career. Born in Amsterdam in 1890, Bünnemeijer had been employed since 1916 as a collector for the Herbarium at Buitenzorg, the great botanical center of the Dutch East Indies. His job was unusually comprehensive: rather than seeking only novelties or conspicuous plants, he described his task as collecting the wild-growing flora of an entire region. By the end of his career with the herbarium his numbered collections exceeded 12,600; the 1920 Sumatran expedition alone occupied numbers 7920–10554. He later studied at Wageningen and became a horticultural teacher in the Netherlands, but it was these years spent collecting in Indonesia that left his enduring botanical legacy.
From 6 February until 12 May 1920, Bünnemeijer worked on and around Gunung Kerinci, then usually called the Koerintjipiek or Peak of Indrapura. At first he botanized in the inhabited Kerinci Valley and around the foot of the volcano, but at the beginning of March he moved his operation fully into the oerwoud—the primeval montane forest. It was a substantial undertaking. In his later account he estimated that the journey produced about 2,650 numbered collections; because at least six specimens were usually prepared under each number, he reckoned that nearly 16,000 individual plants had been sent away. Local Kerinci guides, porters and hunters were essential to that work. Bünnemeijer used their established hunting and trading paths, slept in rough forest pondoks, crossed streams repeatedly, and even followed elephant trails because the great animals had opened convenient passages through otherwise difficult vegetation. His notes read almost like a running inventory of the mountain flora: Sphagnum and Gleichenia in upland marshes; Homalomena curvata, Impatiens, Nepenthes, Dissochaeta and Rubus around their margins; and higher in the forest Elaphoglossum, Argostemma, Cyrtandra, Goodyera, Asplenium, Arisaema and orchids. At 2,150 m he recalled how often during the preceding months he had used elephant paths while botanizing.
Among the thousands of plants gathered during those months was a peculiar aroid collected on 15 March 1920, Bünnemeijer no. 8835. Its label was frustratingly terse: “Koerintji, in forest, 1770 m.” That specimen became the basis of *Amorphophallus incurvatus*. At first glance, “Koerintji” leaves an enormous area in which to place the plant. Bünnemeijer, however, later published a remarkably detailed account of his travels in *De Tropische Natuur*, accompanied by his own map of the central Sumatran highlands. The surrounding specimen record confirms that no. 8835 belongs to his work on Gunung Kerinci itself rather than merely somewhere within the wider Kerinci district. Collection 8840, only five numbers later and gathered on the same day, is explicitly recorded from Gunung Kerinci, while two separately published collections from 16 March, nos. 8911 and 8937, both preserve an elevation of 1,700 m. These records do not locate no. 8835 more precisely, but they confirm that Bünnemeijer was working the mountain’s montane forest around 1,700–1,770 m on 15–16 March. By 17 March he was again collecting at about 1,200 m, demonstrating that collector numbers cannot safely be interpolated as a simple progression up or down the mountain.
A more suggestive clue comes from the collections immediately preceding the type and from Bünnemeijer’s later account of his movements. Two nearby collection numbers, 8755 and 8766, are indexed at 1,500 m, approximately the elevation Bünnemeijer gives for the *kebonhuis* at Sako Doeo, his base on the southwestern side of Gunung Kerinci. These elevations should ultimately be checked against the original specimen labels, but they provide a plausible link between the March collecting sequence and the southwestern base area. Two months later, when Bünnemeijer finally left Kerinci, he retraced a route through country he explicitly said he had botanized repeatedly during the preceding months. From Sako Doeo he ascended the southwestern side of the mountain, crossed tributaries of the Sioelak kanan, passed through montane forest and an upland *rawang* at about 1,860 m, and continued between the river’s headwaters to the Barisan watershed at roughly 2,300 m. Beyond the divide he descended the northwestern side toward Soengai Lambai. Modern geography preserves the essential structure of this route: Sako Doeo corresponds closely with modern Sako Duo, while the Sungai Siulak Deras Kanan drainage rises through the southwestern flank of Gunung Kerinci and the Sungai Lambai drainage lies beyond the divide to the northwest.
Taken together, the evidence does not identify the exact spot where *Amorphophallus incurvatus* was found, but it does allow the vague locality “Koerintji” to be interpreted much more narrowly. The specimen itself securely establishes forest at 1,770 m on Gunung Kerinci. The March collecting sequence places Bünnemeijer between approximately 1,500 and 1,770 m in the days surrounding the collection, while his later travel narrative shows that the southwestern Sako Doeo–Sioelak Kanan corridor crossed terrain he had already explored repeatedly. The most plausible reconstruction therefore places the type locality somewhere in the montane forest of the southwestern to south-southwestern flank of Gunung Kerinci, probably in or near the upper Sungai Siulak Deras Kanan drainage above Sako Duo. The 1,860 m *rawang* is valuable as a fixed landmark on that later route, but it cannot by itself be used to place the March collection immediately below it. A precise coordinate would imply certainty that the surviving evidence does not support; what can reasonably be reconstructed is a probable collecting corridor rather than a single point.
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Amorphophallus incurvatus Alderw.
2. Bulletin du Jardin botanique de Buitenzorg sér. 3, 4: 166 (1922) — protologue.