Nepenthes graciliflora

Nepenthes graciliflora is the most widespread species of Nepenthes in the Philippines although we have seen no reliable records for Palawan, nor for several of the larger Visayas such as Cebu and Negros. Since Elmer published N. graciliflora (Elmer 1912), all workers on Philippine Nepenthes have treated it as a synonym of N. alata (Macfarlane 1927, Merrill 1923). Elmer was evidently aware of the validity of his species and its distinctness from N. alata as he finished his account with “ Apparently quite different from Blanco' s species. ” He later distributed specimens of the same taxon from Mt Makiling, Luzon, as N. graciliflora. However, he neglected to ever make a case for his Nepenthes graciliflora: he did not diagnose it against N. alata, that is, provide the characters that distinguish the two from each other. Instead, he merely gave a description. Without this justification, perhaps it is no wonder that Merrill and Macfarlane remained unaware of the basis of Elmer’s assertion, and treated the name as a synonym of N. alata. Both Elmer and Merrill had collected both N. alata and N. graciliflora in the field in Luzon. It seems that Merrill favoured the views of Macfarlane, the Nepenthes monographer, who seems never to have visited southeast Asia, above those of Elmer, who was probably the Philippines most prolific collector of herbarium specimens.
Most of the specimens seen lack habitat and altitudinal data. The 300 m altitudinal record may be anomalous, it derives from the type collection from Sibuyan.A