AMORPHOPHALLUS MERRILLII
PROTOLOGUE: Amorphophallus merrillii K.Krause, published in Notizbl. Königl. Bot. Gart. Berlin 5: 266 (1912). The protologue is reproduced below.
DISTRIBUTION: Philippines: Philippines.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Philippines: the type was collected on Cavili Island in September 1910, where Merrill found the species very common in forest; current records span two of the three major Philippine island groups.³.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Translated from protologue: Petiole of the leaf terete, smooth, 5 dm long, about 1.5 cm thick at the base; lamina thinly herbaceous, very ample, trisect, the primary segments up to 3.5 dm long and dichotomous, the secondary segments bipinnatifid or again dichotomous, the tertiary segments elliptic or obovate-elliptic, at the apex drawn out into a cusp 1-1.2 cm long, decurrent in a wedge along one side of the base, up to 1.4 dm long and 6.5 cm wide, with numerous parallel, rather conspicuous lateral veins joining a collective vein set back from the margin.²
INFLORESCENCE:
Translated from protologue: Peduncle terete, 5 dm long, about 1.5 cm thick. Spathe oblong-lanceolate, about 2 dm long, convolute below, pale purple. Female inflorescence of the spadix cylindrical, 3 cm long, 1.2 cm thick; male inflorescence 7 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm thick; appendix narrowly elongate-conical, 2.5 dm long, slightly thickened at the base. Stamens broadly obovate, a little shorter than their own width. Ovaries depressed-globose, contracted into a short slender style crowned by a slightly lobed stigma. Berries red, ovoid, obtuse, slightly compressed, 7-8 mm long, 5-6 mm thick.²
ECOLOGY:
Very common in forest on the type island; the current checklist records the species from primary forest²
ETYMOLOGY:
Named by Krause for Elmer Drew Merrill, the great botanist of the Philippine flora, who collected the type.²
NOTES:
1. Krause placed the species in sect. Conophallus and considered it closest to Amorphophallus konjac (as Amorphophallus rivieri), from which it deviates in its larger, differently shaped leaf segments and the shorter female inflorescence; from Amorphophallus paeoniifolius (as Amorphophallus campanulatus), which it rather resembles in habit, it differs in the much shorter styles with an only indistinctly lobed stigma.²
2. The holotype — Merrill's number 7177 in the herbarium of the Bureau of Science, Manila — was destroyed in the Second World War, leaving the species in the same position as Amorphophallus luzoniensis: a Philippine name whose type burned. A preliminary conservation status of Near Threatened has been proposed.³
STORY:
STORY TITLE: The other name the war took
In September 1910, Elmer Drew Merrill — the American botanist who would come to know the Philippine flora better than anyone before or since — collected an Amorphophallus growing in quantity in the forests of Cavili Island. He sent material to Berlin, where Kurt Krause described it in 1912 and named it for its collector. Krause placed it near the plant we now call konjac, and noted that on its island it was very common.
Merrill's specimen, number 7177, was deposited in the herbarium of the Bureau of Science in Manila — the institution Merrill himself had built into the botanical memory of the archipelago. In February 1945, in the Battle of Manila, the Bureau burned, and nearly a million specimens burned with it. The holotype of Amorphophallus merrillii was among them, exactly as the holotype of Amorphophallus luzoniensis was; two Philippine species reduced in one fire to names without name-bearers.
The two species have fared differently since. Amorphophallus luzoniensis has never been verifiably seen again. Amorphophallus merrillii survives — the current national checklist records it from two of the three major island groups and proposes a status of only Near Threatened. But its identity still rests on a description and a burned number, and the recent rediscovery of a lost type of Amorphophallus longispathaceus in New York — solving a century-old Philippine identity puzzle — is a reminder of what a single surviving duplicate can do. Somewhere in a herbarium cabinet, Merrill 7177 may yet have a twin.
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Amorphophallus merrillii K.Krause
2. Notizbl. Königl. Bot. Gart. Berlin 5: 266 (1912) — protologue.