Hoya micrantha

This is the large leaf form of Hoya micrantha, which is found from IndoChina down to northern part of Peninsula Malaysia. It is a relatively cool grower usually found in higher elevation but I have a specimen that has proven a reliable bloomer although it does not become too weedy.
The nice patterning on the tiny bloom can only be appreciated after magnification. This Hoya is placed in Section Eu-Hoya (Miquel), where most of the Hoyas belong, including H. verticiliata, H. revoluta and waymaniae.

Cauldrons of mass destruction

It was a seemingly normal warm cloudy evening.

I was travelling along a little-travelled bitumen path at a little-known corner of Borneo when I caught sight of these curious little pitchers dangling from a vertical slope rising from both sides of our path.
Elegant in pastel hues and seemingly harmless....yet there was something unholy about them....

Curiosity got the better of me as I lifted one of the pitchers and peered into its murky crevice.....

.... what I saw was a massacre of the highest order, a genocide so foul it would stink the Seventh Heaven. Bodies were everywhere, some still intact, others had been disfigured to such extend that rendered identification impossible.

With a heavy heart and heavier footsteps, I made my way gingerly back to the town.

Fortunately there was curry chicken for dinner, which was truly therapeutic for a bitter soul ....

Nepenthes mirabilis, a widespread and very variable plant in SE Asia. This is the common form which is found from S. China down south all the way to Borneo and spreading as far east as New Guinea. While the major diet of Nepenthes albomarginata is termites and that of ampullaria is leaf-litter and droppings, this species is particularly adapted for trapping many types of live insects, using the pinkish pitchers and extrafloral nectaries concentrating on the lids and mouths as bait. The lids and rims of the pitchers are both treacherously slippery so any critters landing there will ski briefly to the well of death, where the marinating fluid, which can have a pH as low as 2 if its freshly secreted, will send them to their afterlife.

Just as a guide, I found that commercial undiluted white vinegar typically has a pH of 2.4 - you can always check out its effect on an ant if you are morbidly curious....

Copper

Maybe a paganistic blacksmith pounded it to shape ....in fact, maybe some small humanoids may be hiding behind the shield with their spears or arrows.

Alocasia cuprea, the Copper leaf from Borneo. The aroid genus Alocasia contains many mesmerising foliage plants that would have been ideal for the landscaping trade had they not been so unpredictable. They tend to grow like perrenials - getting smaller and smaller or suddenly dying off, leaving corms in the soil for regeneration at a latter date.

This specimen has been growing for some years on a wet, shady and peaty area before reaching this size - I am pretty accustomed to it being there - hope it would not decide to die down anytime soon.

Devil and the deep blue C

.... C as in coerulea, Latin for "blue", or in this case a blue orchid, Vanda coerulea to be exact. Blue is a rare colour in nature, so when this large Vanda was found to be endowed with this beautiful bloom, its fate was sealed. It was hunted to near extincton in its habitat by hordes of drooling fanciers and hybridisers. Having been artificially propagated for decades, the plant is now, fortunately, common in trade.
This original form is a rather ungainly looking plant with slender twisted petals. Modern cultivated varieties are more blue and more full - with wide overlapping petals and sepals. This is how man thinks the plant should look like. It is not inconcievable that with the passage of time, the original form will become rarer...or even extinct.

Humans' visions of idealised beauty can be so undemocratic....