Brazilian CPs in the wild - a fantastic trip!
Fernando Rivadavia Lopes (ferndriv@usp.br)
Sat, 2 Mar 1996 18:06:56 -0300 (GRNLNDST)
To all,
As I mentioned before, I've just spent 10 days out in the field CP
hunting. I drove +- 3400km around SE Brazil together with a CP buddy
from Sao Paulo (Fabio Pinheiro) and Joe Mullins (a longtime correspondent
of mine whom I met in England early this year and convinced to come visit
me in Brazil). It was one of the most fruitful CP trips of my life and
I think Joe agrees that he sure got his money's worth!
For Joe it was quite a shock to come to the tropics for the
first time, being a botanists and seeing the immense diversity of plant
life at each place we stopped. Every few minutes we'd hear his yelps of
joy and amazement as he'd spot a plant which until then he only knew
from botanic gardens, books, herbarium, etc. Not to mention the
butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, parrots, hawks, marmoset monkeys, and
other animals we spotted. Being Irish and living in England, he was also
in sheer delight to see such sunny weather, and aghast with all the
lightning produced by the tropical thunderstorms typical of our
summer afternoons.
Anyways, on to CPs. We first went to the city of Caragola in E
Minas Gerais state, bordering the state of Espirito Santo. There we met
Lucio Leoni, who is in charge of the local herbarium and had collected a
large D.villosa-like plant on a nearby mountain range. I'd been amazed
with the herbarium, seeing the long stems on the plants and suspected it
could be something new.
On our arrival, we discovered at the herbarium that a few other
interesting CPs could be found in that area, including U.longifolia,
G.lobata, and U.nelumbifolia! The next day we drove up a terrible dirt
road to the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park, around 60km W from Caragola.
We then climbed a short trail through rainforest to the top of a mountain
covered in grasses and low bushes.
Unfortunately, the long stemmed-Drosera turned out to be normal
D.villosa. They were just growing in a very boggy and shady habitat,
which was what gave them the long stems. In the past I've observed this
happening with D.villosa in similar habitats.
Very abundant among the tall grasses was U.longifolia, a
beautiful form with multiflowered, compact flower scapes, with dark
pink-purple flowers. The leaves were often very long, up to 40cm or
more. The most amazing thing was that about half of the plants were
ALBINO!! I believe this is the first record of albino U.longifolia! Lucio
told me that of all the U.longifolia sites he knew in that region, this
was the only place where he'd observed this albino form. The flowers on
the albino form were a very light-lilac, practically white, still bearing
the orange-yellow stripe at the base of the lower lip. The flower scapes
and leaves were a green-yellow color, instead of the dark-green/reddish
shade of the purple-flowered plants.
Also interesting on this mountain was that we found G.lobata. This
species, similar to G.violacea, was only known from the Serra do Caparao,
around 50km N from Caragola. The flowers were white with dark purple
streaks on the upper lip and purple spurs when in the sun, while in the
shade the white was substituted by lilac and there were also purple
streaks on the lower lip.
The next day we climbed up to a bromeliad covered cliff, where
Lucio had collected U.nelumbifolia. This Utric grows inside bromeliads
like U.humboldtii and some of you may remember that I finally found it
in December '95 growing in the bromeliads at the Rio de Janeiro Botanic
Garden, after years of climbing high mountains and risking my butt
on cliffs, in hopes of seeing it in the wild. It was kind of a let-down
to find it in a botanic garden, so I was still anxious to see it in the
wild.
To our luck, we found TONS of U.nelumbifolia thriving inside the
tanks of Vriesia extensa! Some bromeliads were infested with this Utric,
all the way from the outermost leaf axils right up to the center of the
tanks! None were found growing outside the bromeliads, as U.humboldtii is
said to do. I don't doubt they can grow outside bromeliads, but you'd
have to find a place where the bromeliads grew near or in a boggy area.
We were even lucky enough to catch a few U.nelumbifolia in flower,
though no fruit were found on any of the flower scapes, strangely
enough. The large flowers are a beautiful pink-purple, similar in shape
to those of U.reniformis.
The leaves of U.nelumbifolia have large round lamina which are
peltate, with long petioles. Several reniform leaves were found, mostly
small ones. U.reniformis (a very close relative of U.nelumbifolia) is
said to alsogrow inside bromeliads in some places, together with
U.nelumbifolia. Could this be confusion resulting from these odd
reniform leaves of U.nelumbifolia?
Vegetative reproduction was intense. U.nelumbifolia sends up
delicate aerial stolons, which Peter Taylor mentions in his book as
serving to colonize other bromeliads. Yet we observed that each aerial
stolon was much more often recolonizing the inner leaf axils of the same
bromeliad it was growing up from. Due to the fact that the younger,
central leaves of the broms are more open, horizontal that the older
leaves on the outside of the rosettes, the U.nelumbifolia stolons more
often than not seemed to descend closer to the center of the bromeliad
where they emerged from.
Only a few aerial stolons were observed to descend into
neighboring bromeliads. Though bromeliad rosettes were often tightly
packed on the rocks, the distance between the central parts of the
plants (the leaf axils colonized by U.nelumbifolia) was usually bigger
than the curve formed by the descending aerial stolons of U.nelumbifolia.
Can any of you give an insight on how similar U.humboldtii aerial stolons
are? Andreas or Joachim, who've seen them in the wild??
These aerial stolons grow vertically for around 20cm and then
curve back downwards, around 5 to 15cm away from where they emerged,
hiding into a new bromeliad leaf axil, where they once again thicken and
branch. A few stolons were found to bear a small leaf with a short
petiole on the green aerial segments. The traps were very large,
especially on the stolons growing inside leaf axils where there was
water, closer to the center of the rosettes.
After a few hours we left the site, more than satisfied! The heat
and intense sunlight had been a bit of a problem, though our main worry
was the danger of the site. The smooth rock of the mountain side where
the bromeliads grew and the steepness were a constant source of fret,
especially in some spots, where the inclination below didn't even allow
us to see the bottom. Not to mention that in a few wet spots the rock
became VERY slippery. Luckily we got no rain while we were there. By the
time we left, our feet were aching from walking on the steep incline for
so many hours. Well, at least I'd finally seen U.nelumbifolia in the
wild!!!!
To be continued...........
Fernando Rivadavia
Sao Paulo, Brazil