Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 18:32:06 -0200 From: "Fernando Rivadavia" <fe_riva@uol.com.br> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg3210$foo@default> Subject: CPs in N.America, Argentina, and Brazil -- closing a cycle
Dear friends,
Sorry for the long silence!! Work, work, work (and travel!),
that's all I can say. I have piles of mail to catch up on and I won't be
able to anytime soon unfortunately. So here go a few little stories to keep
you guys busy first...
Several interesting things have happened to me CP-wise over the
past few months. I'll start from the start to make it easier. In late August
/ Early September I had to go to San Francisco for work again (the trip
which was supposed to have occurred in June, coinciding with the ICPS
conference!!!). Well, since this was the first time I go there during the
summer, I obviously took the opportunity to go see Darlingtonia! I drove N
along the coast to the Gasquet area on the border with Oregon (passing
through magnificent redwood forests on the way!) and saw lots of
Darlingtonia, thanks to tips given by Barry and Hawkeye. They were on the
roadside and in a bog announced on the roadside as a nature walk. Tons of
plants! Somehow I manged to miss the famous place right by the road where
they're said to grow on cliffs with P.macroceras nortensis. In fact I didn't
see a single Ping nor Drosera. OK, I admit I practically only had eyes for
the Darlingtonia and wasn't too interested in the others, but I did take a
look around and am wodnering if maybe late August wasn't already too late
for these smaller dudes. Anyways, it was a gorgeous sunny day and the
Darlingtonia were BEAUTIFUL. No more flowers though, only seeds. Got some
lovely shots!
A million sorries to the friends I wasn't able to meet or
contact this time in California (as well as Matt in New York on the previous
weekend!), but things were a bit rushed and I left the last weekend for a
stop in Florida. YES! I finally saw Sarracenia in the wild as well! Thanks
to the enormous hospitality and patience of Bob McMorris who took a whole
day to drive me all the way out to the panhandle and back. We saw more CPs
than I've ever seen before on a single day I believe. That is, a half day
since it takes several hours from Bob's place to reach the panhandle area!
We saw nearly all species of Sarras (except rubra and oreophila) and even a
few hybrids. Fields of them, never ending, in all colors, a dream come true!
Bob complained the plants had suffered from drought, but I certainly had no
complaints at all, they all looked wonderful to me at least! :):) The
weather didn't help much and was a bit rainy, but I couldn't care less. Cold
and soggy are a small price to pay! Only a hurricane could've wrecked it for
me...
Intermingled with the Sarras there were often HUGE quantities of
D.filiformis tracyi. What an amazing spectacle to see hundreds of glistening
leaves in the brief moments of sunshine! And then there were the
extravagantly pinkish-brown P.planifolia, WOW! We also saw some P.pumila,
U.juncea, and lots of D.capillaris. At one site the latter were growing in
white sand, making a lovely contrast! At this same site, we found some
S.leucophylla with huge mouths! And many of these had a huge green spider
each. Got some nice shots of these too! Oh, and there was also a site with
introduced VFTs!! They seemed to feel right at home and were VERY abundant.
I pretty much feel satisfied that I've seen them in nature, although not in
their original range. Now I've only got Drosophyllum and Triphiophyllum left
to see.... :):) Bob, how can I ever thank you and your wife?????? (Oh,
wait, I know a way to thank you at least... ;-) )
Two weeks ago I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for work and
took the opportunity to meet up with a local CPer I've been in touch with
for a while: Arauco Schifman. We spent several hours together talking during
the week and on the weekend (as well as walking around that lovely city and
even enjoying some of the nightlife), when he took me to see his collection.
He's really keen on studying D.brevifolia in the wild in NE Argentina -- and
I'm all for that! So we exchanged all info we knew about these plants in
S.America, which are known from S Brazil, Uruguay, NE Argentina, and even
one collection in Paraguay according to Arauco.
He had just received some specimens from NE Argentina. These looked very
much like the ones I've seen in S Brazil, no variations have been recorded
so far. The flowers are lilac-pink and apparently not as big as some of the
N.American forms (rosettes too). Anyways, we're planning to maybe do a
little exploring together in the future to study this species in the
wild.... Gracias Arauco y nos veremos en breve!
One other really interesting CP story occurred in late
September. I was sent for work to a city called Campos dos Goytacazes, on
the northern coast of Rio de Janeiro state, SE Brazil. Nobody from the
company wanted to go there, since it's a bit out of the way, but I quickly
volunteered for a very important reason. The city of Campos is just N of one
of the newest national parks in Brazil, called Parque Nacional da Restinga
de Jurubatiba. And this is the S-most site where D.intermedia has been
collected in Brazil in the past few decades. This Drosera is widespread in
N.America and Europe, as most of you know, but in S.America it is only known
from the Gran Sabana in Venezuela and from the central coast of Brazil: a
few sites in the state of Bahia, from Salvador to the S-most tip, and 2
sites in Rio de Janeiro state. All are from coastal habitats know as
restingas. The Jurubatiba Nat.Park was established specifically to preserv
this sort of vegetation.
Now some of you must be wondering why I'd be interested in such
a widespread and common species, right? Well, it just so happens that
D.intermedia is the ONLY species of Drosera known to grow in Brazil which I
still had not seen in the wild! (Observation: Some of you may remember all
that story about the Neblina expedition, when I didn't find D.meristocaulis.
Although Mt.Neblina is on the Brazilian/ Venezuelan border, D.meristocaulis
is only officially known from the Venezuelan side. We only hoped that we'd
also find it on the Brazilian side, which is the side we climbed. NOT!)
My first attempt to find D.intermedia was in early 1996 with
fellow CPer Joe Mullins who was visiting (Hi Joe!!). We drove all around SE
Brazil and our last stop was the town of Cabo Frio on the coast of Rio de
Janeiro state (a bit south of Campos and Jurubatiba). D.intermedia had been
collected in Cabo Frio in the 50's or 60's, but we searched all around and
found nothing. Beach houses had probably taken their place. Or maybe we just
didn't really know where to look for them. Restingas can vary from marshy to
extremely dry (cacti are common), so it's hard to know the preferred habitat
of D.intermedia until you see it I guess. Well, this actually applies to all
CP species I've ever found in the wild: usually you know the general area
where it grows, but only with time do you learn to identify the exact
habitat each species prefers.
Unfortunately I only had a few hours to explore the Jurubatiba
Nat.Park on my way back from Campos to the city of Rio on a Saturday
morning, before flying back to S.Paulo. My first major problem was finding
Jurubatiba. There are no signs yet and all the dirt roads are mostly not on
any map. So I basically just drove all around, searching for a road which
would take me through the lowlands and right to the beach. I had a feeling
the plants were right by the beach since this is how D.capillaris and
D.brevifolia often grow further S in Brazil. But I checked a few other
possible habitats along the way just in case. I saw plenty of large and
beautiful U.foliosa growing in small canals the road crossed and also some
U.gibba in a flooded grassy area.
When I was almost giving up I finally found myself in a tiny
seaside village made up mostly of beach houses just outside the park.
Heading N from this town was a sandy road that appeared to go for endless
miles along an infinite deserted beach. A large sand dune was all that
separated the road from the sea. On the opposite side of the road was a flat
stretch of sparse grasses in sand with a few marshy pools. I immediately
parked the car and began walking around these. I walked and walked, but
found nothing. In such situations, when I don't know exactly where to search
for a species, I always walk in zig-zags, hoping to cover all the possible
micro-habitats and eventually sumble on the correct one. But time was
running out and I was beginning to think I'd have to leave it for another
opportunity.
Circling one of the marshy pools (and even walking inside it,
just in case), I inadvertently headed further out from the beach along the
grassy flat to higher ground where the vegetation suddenly became thicker
(short trees and bushes plus lots of terrestrial bromeliads and cacti).
There I found a borderline habitat between the flat grassy areas and the
higher ground with thicker vegetation. It was almost like a straight line
drawn on the ground, only about a meter wide. And this is where I found
D.intermedia. HURRAY!!!!
Why there and not elsewhere on the humid flats? My guess is that
the flats are often flooded in the summer, while the borderline habitat is
on slightly higher ground, but is still humid enough during the dry season.
The grasses were thicker and tehre was even sphagnum. D.intermedia not only
grew among these, but also a bit further out into the flats, where they were
often larger and more beautiful due to less competition.
The plants were often a deep red and I was lucky enough to find
2 plants with open white flowers. Among D.intermedia I found U.tricolor in
the grassier / sphagnum area. It was the typical lowland form with larger
blue-purple flowers common in cultivation (in highlands they usually have
smaller flowers and longer scapes). In the sandier stretches there was a
tiny Utric with D.intermedia which had no flowers. May have been U.subulata
or U.erectiflora, too species known to grow around there.
I took lots of pics, but unfortunately I had little time to
spend there or I'd be missing a flight. I'll apparently be going back soon
however and this time I intend to take a whole weekend there to explore that
road that went N along the coast. D.chrysolepis was recently discovered in
similar habitats in the state of Bahia, growing with D.intermedia even, so I
have a tiny bit of hope it may reach this far S....
Anyways, to see D.intermedia in the wild was a tremendous joy
for me, which you guys will understand better than anyone else. It closed a
cycle. I saw my first wild Drosera in Brazil (D.montana var.tomentosa) in
May 1990 at the Serra do Carassa in Minas Gerais state. Since then, I have
spent countless days on busses/cars travelling all around the country, hiked
my boots off, and was able to see numerous sites with D.graminifolia,
D.ascendens, D.villosa, D.communis, D.chrysolepis, D.montana var.montana,
D.montana var.schwackei, D.hirtella var.hirtella, D.hirtella var.lutescens,
D.colombiana/ pumila, D.graomogolensis, D.capillaris, D.brevifolia, several
other new/ possibly new species/ subspecies/ hybrids, and all their
wonderful variation. Now, ten years later I have closed this cycle with
D.intermedia and can claim that I've seen all native Brazilian sundews in
the wild!!!
There's still plenty to study of course and I'm sure there must
be new ones still out there, of course. A new goal might be to see all of
the S.American species, but... that would mean I'd have to return to Neblina
to search for D.meristocaulis. No matter how wonderful it seems however, I'm
not sure I wanna go back there!!! Well, I may get a chance to see D.uniflora
soon...
Best Wishes,
Fernando Rivadavia
Sao Paulo, Brazil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:35:14 PST