Our friendly orchid expert, Eric Christenson, describes a month documenting orchids in the southeastern Peruvian Departments of Cusco, Madre de Dios, and Puno.
The South Eastern Pennsylvania Orchid Society (SEPOS) is an active society that seems to appreciate orchid species as much or more than the showy hybrids more familiar to the general public. Their show tables at monthly meetings are renowned for unusual species grown to enviable perfection. Combined with their horticultural enthusiasm is a deep seated view of both conservation and education. SEPOS kindly looked favorably upon a proposal I made to spend a month in southeast Peru (Nov 2009) in continuation of my 15+ year study of Peru’s orchid flora as well as my equally deep involvement with helping numerous college students in Peru with serious interests in orchids. It was quite a month.
My friends always ask me why I keep going back to Peru. Increasingly our society takes the comfortable, easy way out. Scientists sit at a computer, google information, do laboratory studies, and this is considered state-of-the-art research. The pendulum swing in botany du jour is molecular systematics based on DNA analysis. Well, there is a second group of botanists who really do get it – that to know plants is to see plants, both in the herbarium and in the wild. This is called organismal biology and seems to decrease each year at a time when biodiverse regions of the planet are literally screaming for help. Fortunately, there are still us fossils who trudge into the jungle or cloud forest and learn volumes from the experience. That is one reason I keep going back. And yes, we have a good laugh at all the Academic pundits who insist that “it has all been done.” Read on.
The second reason I keep going back is to work with the students. The difference between students in the tropics and most mainstream students in the U.S. is night and day. Students here have so many resources available to them but are jaded with a blanket of cynicism long before college. In contrast, students in the tropics, with remarkably limited resources, are fundamentally enthusiastic to their core and see the future as nothing but wondrous unlimited possibilities. Their spirit is infectious. And when a student in the tropics gloms on to a subject like botany or orchids, they are intensely focused and a delight to teach. The most common, and idiotic question asked by students in the U.S. -“Will this be on the test?” – would never occur to these kids. They realize the importance of every opportunity to learn.
People who travel with me in the tropics know that I have a set of absolute rules. One of them, is that we always go to the local university and any student who wants to go into the field gets in the van and we pay all expenses. No exceptions. They not only represent the brightest, most self-motivated students, but they are also what I fondly call “skinny young Peruvians” who are far more capable of gathering orchids on those steep hillsides than any gringo will ever be. You have no idea. The reality is that with each trip there are fewer students to take into the field. But this is not a bad thing, rather it is a testament to the success of a huge bunch of us who have helped over time when we can. Those students from years past have successfully moved on. One student is getting a Ph.D. in Spain, two are getting Master’s degrees at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and many others have been hired by foreign researchers doing biodiversity work in the region or for conservation groups working actively to increase critical habitats such as the cloud forest portion of Manu National Park and to create green corridors linking protected areas.
This trip I worked with BRIT botanical researcher John Janovec, naturalist Pedro Centeno, and orchid students Jefferson Ballón, Walter Huaraca, and William Nauray. The results are still being analyzed, of course, but there are many preliminary standouts. The only Peruvian orchids included on CITES Appendix I are all species of the genus Phragmipedium, a tropical ladyslipper. CITES is the Convention for International Trade of Endangered Species and species on Appendix I are all but impossible to transfer across international borders without exceptional permits. [Editorial note: The BRIT-AABP team has permits from the Peruvian government to collect these orchids.] An Appendix I plant is the equivalent of a panda or rhinoceros. We collected Phragmipedium caudatum, a species with outrageously long “dingle-dangle” petals, in bloom twice during the month. Once was in the upper Marcapata valley (above Quincemil) where it was already known from the work of another Cusco student, Marciel Villafuerte. The second collection, from the neighboring Department of Puno, represents a previously unknown population of the species and only the second collection of it ever made in Puno. So that’s a big deal. Even more significant was finding a plant of Phragmipedium boisserianum in the Marcapata valley. This is a new southern range extension by several hundred miles! A very big deal for conservation indeed. This is where we chuckle again that “it has all been done.”
Recently, my own research has concentrated on the orchid genus Maxillaria and I am almost finished with the first monograph ever written on this group of +/- 570 neotropical species. To me, the most significant find was an otherwise nondescript small white-flowered species, M. xylobiiflora, a rather daunting Latin name that means it has a flower that resembles one of a different orchid genus, Xylobium. For the past 20+ years I have worked on species-level taxonomy and on accurately defining species and nailing down hard data on their distribution, both geographic and ecologic. All too often I have found that wide-ranging “variable” species are actually complexes of closely related species. After the taxonomic research is done, a very different picture often emerges. Maxillaria xylobiiflora is a case in point and the species, originally described from Bolivia, has been recorded additionally from Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. Seeing a fresh flower allowed me to finally understand the species (the original specimen was destroyed in Berlin near the close of WW II and the only duplicate specimen, at the Smithsonian, just has buds). I now realize that M. xylobiiflora is not wide-ranging but is, in actuality, endemic to Bolivia and adjacent southern Peru and that most of the other reports are a related species, by chance also collected on this trip. So instead of an unimportant, wide-ranging species, we need to reconsider the conservation status of M. xylobiiflora given its vastly smaller real distribution.
We also collected a different, large-flowered white species of Maxillaria (M. grayi). It had only been known from Ecuador and here it was on the “wrong” end of Peru hundreds of miles from the Ecuador border. While remarkable disjunct populations do occur, in this case I think it is more likely proof that all of Peru is so undercollected that the gaps in our knowledge are very large gaps indeed. Remember, “it has all been done.” Further proof was collecting Cyrtochilum macasense, a first for Peru, but expected as the species was known from both Ecuador and Bolivia. Why then is this additional proof that Peru is undercollected and our knowledge fledgling at best? Because the plant is 2 meters tall with 100+ flowers on an inflorescence. Until you do field work in the Andes, you can’t comprehend how things like this are overlooked. But they routinely are.
Finally, on a personal note, I took great pleasure in corrupting John to the way of the orchid. Before joining him I told him that general botanists don’t even see orchids and that I would teach him how to find them. His original response was pretty much a veiled harrumph about orchid people and our fanciful notions. But after a month, he had to admit that he now “got it.” It literally takes retraining the way in which you view the landscape. General botanists look for flowers and fruits. Orchid specialists and others who study epiphytes (tree-dwellers) and lithophytes (rock-dwellers) don’t particularly look for either flowers or fruits. We look for habitats and then once focused on the habitat, let our eyes carefully inventory the area. So when driving by a roadside cliff, you learn to zoom in on the marginal areas favored by orchids (where “normal” plants don’t offer serious competition), and then spot the orchids in flower. After a month, even John was seeing orchids. I joked that I am freakish in my ability to spot orchids. On our last day in the Department of Puno, driving down a road-from-hell under construction, at dusk, as it started to rain, I said stop the truck. And there was a large-flowered, starry white orchid (Epidendrum carpophorum – new to Puno, by the way). Not bad. But what of the future? Ten minutes later, the sun setting more, the rain picking up, Jefferson, in the back of the truck, pounded on the roof for us to stop. Why? He spotted a second species of Epidendrum (E. orchidiflorum), but this one with small, dull green flowers. I am both seriously impressed by his spotting and ever more confident that these wonderful students are the future of tropical botany and serious conservation efforts.
Eric A. Christenson, 4503 21st Ave. West, Bradenton, Florida 34209 (orchideric@juno.com)
Please click here to view select orchid images from this expedition!
