Dollars to Dong-Bahts

Plant Exploration in Northern Vietnam and Northern Thailand
8/9/2005-9/2/2005

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Saturday 8/27/2005

After a 7:30am breakfast, we started the trek back toward the southeast and the tiny town of Nan. We drove down the main highway until after lunch, when we began making a few stops. The first, near the town of Chun, yielded more Amorphophallus macrorhizus, but with some very different petiole patterns. As we continued to head toward Nan (120km from Laos), the floristic diversity seemed to lessen. It was pretty much only Amorphophallus macrorhizus and A. longituberosus for the rest of the day. We arrived in the town of Nan to find a surprisingly bustling little town. Expecting the dumpiest hotel on the trip, we were shocked when we walked into the elegant lobby of the Dhevaraj Hotel. This amazing hotel was run like a fancy western-style hotel with a superb restaurant and high-speed Internet in the lobby, all for the low price of $20 US per night. If you find yourself in Nan, although I can't imagine why, the Dhevaraj Hotel is a great place to stay.

Sunday 8/28/2005

Below the waterfall, it was Amorphophallus heaven. We found A. paeonifolius, A. krausii, A. longituberosus, and what appears to be A. laoticus. The A. cf. laoticus, which grew in seasonally flooded creeks, was stunning with young leaves edged in red, and older specimens exhibiting a dramatic silver-centered leaf pattern. Alan found another heavily speckled amorphophallus petiole lying on the ground where the weedtrimming crew had recently finished. Not only was the petiole pattern unique, but it was forming leaf axil bulbils. We believe this is possibly another new undescribed species.

Our next stop was the Tham Pha Nang Khoi Caves at a mere 993' elevation. As we walked up the steps to the grotto, there were amorphophallus everywhere. One was identified by Alan as Amorphophallus symonianus, which is another axillary leaf bulb-forming species. Two others did not appear to be forming bulbils, and they had good petiole patterns, which is not a characteristic of A. symonianus. There is good reason to think that one or both of these could also be new species. We were quite rushed by now, both because it was 2:30pm and we still hadn.t stopped for lunch, and we also hoped to make the long drive to Phitsanulok for the evening.

Our only other stop for the day was when we spotted some high limestone cliffs that were covered in cliff bananas and Amorphophallus paeonifolius. The cliff bananas were actually a still undescribed species of Ensete, closely related to E. superbum. These dramatic bananas grow only 6' tall, but can reach 15' in spread. After tromping through the steep slopes of corn, then wading through the obscenely thorny leguminous weed that carpeted the upper slopes, we reached the bananas, which were growing in cracks in the giant boulders. Alan was even able to find huge fruit clusters on a couple of the plants....albeit at the insignificant price of being attacked by a colony of large biting ants. As we returned to the van and loaded up, we glanced ahead to see our first elephant crossing the street in front of the van. We had been warned to be cautious in the woods, especially when we came across wide paths through the vegetation, since there are still elephants in the wild.

We finally arrived at our hotel in Phitsanulok around 6:30pm, and to our surprise, found that we had English speaking Fox News on our televisions and a prostitute on the front steps. As we processed and recorded, we watched the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which was bearing down on New Orleans. Interestingly, Vietnam was also being hit by a typhoon, and Chiang Mai, where we had been just a few days earlier, had been hit with devastating flooding. We stopped for dinner at a nearby restaurant to find that the wait staff outnumbered their customers...us. With the extensive seating area, I can only assume that tourist season must bring much larger crowds.

Monday 8/29/2005