Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 16:49:08 -0300 From: "Fernando Rivadavia-Lopes" <fe_riva@uol.com.br> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg2485$foo@default> Subject: CPs of (COLD!) Southern Brazil and "restingas"
To all,
A few weeks ago I was working in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio
Grande do Sul state, southern Brazil. It was the coldest week the city has
seen in 45 years -- lucky me!! 8-P Temperatures reached freezing every
night and even snow was seen in town. OK, not bad for temperate standards,
but terrible for us tropical people who aren't used to it and have to deal
with it without any central heating or such. The cold wave hit almost the
whole country pretty badly. Good thing winter doesn't last very long around
here!
Anyways, during the weekend I rented a car and drove all around
some highlands N or Porto Alegre and even into the state of Santa Catarina
briefly. I guess winter isn't the best time of year to search for CPs on
these highlands, since this is the coldest place in Brazil, receiving a few
snowfalls every year usually. But I've always been curious about which CPs
could be found there and whether they went dormant or not during the cold
season.
I visited two famous mountain resort towns called Gramado and
Canela on Saturday. Very pretty and all, but of course I was after CPs so I
quickly headed to a famous waterfall nearby called Caracol. Very impressive!
There's a metal stairway going all the way down to the base: nearly 1000
steps!!! This is equivalent to a 40-story building I was told. On the way
down I wondered why there were so many rest stops -- and on the return trip
I found out why! Man, my legs still ached 5 days later! Not to mention that
I got soaked by spray at the base while looking for plants -- not a pleasant
thing when temperatures are hanging around 5C!
Anyways, I looked around several interesting sites and found nothing
anywhere around the waterfall or in that general region of Gramado/Canela.
Strange. Were they dormant or simply not native there at all??
On Sunday I drove to the famous Itaimbezinho canyon in the
Aparados da Serra National Park. I'd seen many pictures before, but was
nonetheles aghast when I finally saw it with my own eyes. Standing at nearly
1000m altitude on a plateau covered with rainforest dotted with the
primitive-looking Araucaria pines (which resemble wine glasses), you look
out upon a crevice a few hundred meters wide, 600-700m deep, vertical
cliffs, with two huge waterfalls plunging into its depths. It looked like
something right out of a King Kong movie!! WOW! Truly one of the most
breathtaking sceneries I've seen in my whole life! Well it was sure worth
withstanding that freaking freezing wind blowing up that canyon -- but
barely!!!!
Well with all this cold weather, I sure was surprised to finally
find the first CPs of the weekend growing right at the end of the canyon at
a small seepage on the banks next to the trail which led to the opposite
side of the canyon. There I found some D.brevifolia and what was either
U.tricolor or U.tridentata. The latter were flowerless so I couldn't tell.
The D.brevifolia looked fine, albeit the cold. One was even beginning to
send
up a flower scape. Yet this site had surely been getting plenty of frost and
even some snow recently. I guess this meant they were frost resistant...
I left the park driving along a road that took me to the coast,
from 1000m altitude to sea level in only about 20km. A fantastic drive with
wonderfull views! Between around 850-750m altitude, I saw several sites
along the road with U.reniformis. Most of the leaves were tiny and looked
healthy. Yet the larger leaves were all obviously "burnt" by frost/snow! I
realized that only the leaves closest to the wet soil or running water were
healthy. At that moment I realized that the site with D.brevifolia and
U.tricolor/tridentata had also been soaking wet. Could the water have kept
frost/snow from accumulating on the leaves of these CPs (and killing them
off)?? Maybe they aren't resistant to frost/snow then. This would explain
why I saw so few CPs on those highlands, although plenty of suitable
habitats were found... I'll have to check out this region again in the
summer, someday, to be sure.
These highlands I was on are called the Serra Geral, a huge
escarpment visible from the beach -- which was my next destination. No, I
wasn't crazy enough to feel like swimming in that cold weather, I was after
CPs of course. Beach CPs. There are several CP species in Brazil known to
grow in sandy coastal habitats, including U.nephrophylla, U.gibba,
U.tricolor, U.myriocista, U.erectiflora, other terrestrial & aquatic Utrics,
D.capillaris, D.brevifolia, D.intermedia, and even D.chrysolepis and
D.montana var.tomentosa (which are mostly associated with highland
habitats), as well as Catopsis berteroniana. These coastal habitats are
known as "restingas" around here and a national park was recently created to
preserve such habitats in the coast of Rio de Janeiro state (where I am glad
to say D.intermedia were recently collected!).
Anyways, nearly 10 years back my friend Mauricio Piliackas
visited a beach resort called Torres (in Rio Grande do Sul state, border
with Santa Catarina state, at the foot of the Serra Geral mentioned above).
There he found D.brevifolia, D.capillaris, and U.tricolor in the restingas
right behind the beach. I'd never really had the chance to study true
restinga habitats and their CPs before, so I was immensely curious to visit
Torres.
I arrived at Torres late on Sunday afternoon, after driving down
from the Itaimbezinho canyon, and only had a short time before sunset to
search for adequate CP sites. Luckily I found them at the first place I
stopped at. I remembered Mauricio mentioning something about them being very
plentiful in the area -- it was true! I quickly found all 3 species he'd
found. And amazingly close to the beach too!
D.brevifolia was by far the most common, growing in sparse
grasses in humid sandy soil. None had inflorescences, but the rosettes were
looking good, often a very deep wine-red. U.tricolor and D.capillaris were
found growing in lower wetter pockets of black peaty soil. No flowers on
either and the D.capillaris looked mostly semi-dormant. I was really
interested in seeing that these two Drosera species appeared to occupy very
distinct niches within the same habitat. Anyways, there was too much
coastline to explore and too little time before sunset....
I recently had a chance to visit the southern coast of Bahia
state (NE Brazil), where D.intermedia has been found in the past few
decades. Unfortunately I couldn't find any appropriate habitats and this
continues to be the only Drosera species I have yet to see in the wild in
Brazil (of the known species at least!). All I saw around there was
U.gibba.... 8-P A few weeks ago I was in Montevideo, Uruguay, and I
remembered that nearly 10 years ago my friend Randy Lamb from Canada (Hi
Randy!) had found U.tridentata, D.brevifolia, and
possibly D.capillaris not far from the city in ditches along a coastal road.
I was planning to go check this out -- as well as several dozen kilometers
of coastline -- but the weather turned really nasty during the weekend, with
lots of rain, wind, and near-freezing temperatures. I chickened out and
holed up in my hotel...
All the best,
Fernando Rivadavia
Sao Paulo, Brazil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:35:12 PST