Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 00:19:36 +0100 From: "Joachim Nerz" <joachim.nerz@albatros.tue.bawue.de> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg395$foo@default> Subject: Neblina & Minas Gerais
Hello everybody,
first of all a big apologize to the people, who tried to contact me
since end of December; back from Neblina I just now find the time
for mailing!
Just a notice: In the next future I want to add some photos of
Brazilian CP's and its habitats from our expedition to Neblina and
our trip to Minas Gerais and the 'Orgelmountains' at our homepage
(Carnivorous Plants in its habitats), managed by Matthias Schmidt!
It is interesting, but at the plateau of Neblina it is by far not as
easy to find Heliamphora as e.g. on Roraima-tepuy; I think, it is
due to the different geologic structure, because different to
Roraima, the Neblina-tepuy is folded and it seems, that for this
reason there are more different small habitats with different
species as on the tepuys in the North! So, oftenly you can find
patches with dense, nearly impenetrable forest besides shrubby
areas, dominated by genera like Bonnetia and oftenly the huge
Broccinia tatei or you can find the vegetation of steep cliff-faces!
>From literature I know, there must be also vast open boggy areas,
the real habitat of e.g. Drosera meristocaulis! But the few
expeditions, which visited these very remote areas usually used a
helicopter!
Anyway, after several days searching for Heliamphora, we've found
it: an open swampy area with the beautiful H. t. neblinae; it is
quite interesting, but each patch of it looks different; the plants
in the open area are usually reddish, without stem, but you also can
find patches with nearly green plants and some plants besides shrubs
start to get short stems, which could reach in single plants nearly
one meter! Also the shape of lid is very variable from patch to
patch; some plants have very nice, comparable large red lids!
The other CP- species, we've found there listed Fernando several
days before (see his mail from 27.01.1999)! It is quite
interesting, that in many species you can find slight differences to
the populations of the more Northern tepuys! E.g. Utricularia
quelchii shows somewhat pink to violet flowers on Neblina and at
Roraima it shows its very purple-red flowers; besides that, it is
nearly the same!
Back from Neblina, our group did split. To recover from the very
difficult expedition to Neblina, Katrin Hinderhofer and myself
decided, to visit some CP-areas in the Southern part of Brazil;
other members of the expedition (Andreas Wistuba, Christoph Scherber
and Mauricio Piliackas) had to go back to home or continued to
Venezuela (Fernando Rivadavia, Ed Read and Gert Hogenstreed). So,
with some good informations from Fernando Rivadavia and Mauricio
Piliackas, we realy could concentrate on the most interesting
CP-areas; at several sites in Minas Gerais we were able to see
pretty large plants of D. graminifolia, the gracile D. spec.
'Emas', D. chrysolepis (with- and without stem), D. montana, D.
montana var. schwackei, maybe D. tomentosa, D. communis, and D.
hirtella; from Lentibulariaceae we have found Genlisea aurea (very
pretty plants with large yellow flowers), G. glabra, maybe G.
pygmea (has still to be identified), G. violacea, the huge G.
spec. 'Cipo', which seems to be quite close to G. uncinata, U.
neottoides, which is growing just in little rivulets, the very
common U. subulata, U. amethystina and 2 or 3 more Utrics;
unfortunately I am not too familiar with the taxonomy of CP's from
Southern Brazil, so there are still some questionmarks! It is quite
obvious, that there are several relations between the CP-species of
Minas Gerais, at S-Brazil and the Guyana-shield in Venezuela and
Northern Brazil; so you can find species like G. repens, G.
pygmea, G. filiformis in both areas, others are specific for the S.
(e.g. G. aurea or G. violacea), or for the Guyana-shield in the
N. (e.g. G. guyanensis); the same at Drosera; as I know, both
regions belong to the very old sandstone-area, which is divided
since long time by the huge Amazon-basin! It is quite interesting,
that in some areas of Minas Gerais (S) you realy can see flat-topped
tablemountains, like in the Roraima-area (N), but much more decayed!
Another quite interesting area you can find quite close to Rio de
Janeiro: the 'Orgelmountains'; it's shape is very interesting, very
steep and very smooth rockwalls, oftenly so smooth and steep, that
it is free of vegetation or just single specimen of Bromeliaceae are
able to grow there; and especially these Bromeliaceae are
interesting for CPers: in some of it you can find the stranke U.
nelumbifolia, growing exactly like U. humboldtii in the
leave-axils! Other CP's, we could find in the area were D.
villosa, Utricularia geminiloba (quite common there) and Utricularia
tricolor with its pretty large violet flowers!
It is quite funny, in several days in the Southern part of Brazil,
we have found more CP-species as in several weeks at the
Neblina-expedition!
Bye
Joachim
Joachim Nerz Arndtstr. 2 71032 B\366blingen Germany
Tel. +49 07031 / 233563 Fax +49 07031 / 225483 e-mail:
joachim.nerz@albatros.tue.bawue.de
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