Jungle – and mosquitoes – still beckon for desk-bound Chinese botanist

Botanist Yin Jiantao is bitten by fewer mosquitoes nowadays, and that makes him feel a bit uncomfortable. Sitting in a clean, air-conditioned office at the Tropical Botanical Garden in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province, he misses the wet shirts, dirty boots and dim rainforest of field trips. Yin is kept busy as executive deputy director of the Xishuangbanna herbarium, one of China’s largest collections of plant specimens, and administrative obligations mean he cannot venture out into the field for long. But he still succumbs to the lure of the jungle from time to time.

Your latest paper reported a new species, Amorphophallus bubenensis , in the journal Phytotaxa’s August issue. You found the plant on a field trip eight years ago. What took you so long to determine the species was new?

Amorphophallus plants do not flower very often. Some species blossom only once a decade – a strategy they use to compete with other plants in the dimly lit tropical forest. Most of the time, the Amorphophallus grows plain-looking leaves to conduct photosynthesis and stock up energy in its enlarging roots in the form of starch. Only when the root crop is large enough will the Amorphophallus shed its leaves and grow a large, single flower for reproduction.

We collected the first sample of bubenensis in 2008, and it had only a leaf. I brought the root home and cultivated it in the hope of seeing its flower, which would tell us the uniqueness of the species. Four years later it blossomed and died. We did not have a chance to collect the leaf, which could only regrow after flowering. So we went out again to collect more samples. It took us a long time to complete the record with flower and leaf. We are now sure that bubenensis stands as a completely new species.

Amorphophallus noodles are a popular choice in Chinese hotpot menus. What does the new species taste like?