Our first
stop of the day (S075)
provided some marvellous Copiapoa grandiflora and C. longistaminea
to point our cameras at. Some of the plants seemed to have a fungal or bacterial
infection, causing black mucilage to seep out of the the stems.
Things got even better at the
next stop (S076), when two
more species of Copiapoa joined those seen at the previous stop. But the
two 'new boys' were a lot more difficult to find. C laui was practically
invisible, until I found one in flower. The small stems could easily be mistaken
for old guanaco droppings. The second, tentatively identified as C.
esmeraldana, was larger, but as 90% plus of the plant body was pulled into
the ground and covered in dust and gravel, the yellow flowers popping out of the
ground provided a good guide. There is some doubt about our ID of these plants,
as seed from these plants and from C. grandiflora have germinated in the
UK and are indistinguishable from each other. Did we get the ID wrong? Or did
Ritter see two different generations of the same plant as different species?
Just to
confuse matters a little more, Marlon was seen rushing about the place, chasing
a single blow fly (or was it a small black bee) as it was flying from flower to
flower, visiting all the four species in turn - so surely there should be some
hybrids, or are some of the taxa we were looking at the hybrids? If so, which is
which?
Too much
excitement makes you hungry, so we went to the mouth of the Guanillos Valley for
a spot of lunch on the beach (S077),
among more clumps of C. longistaminea right opposite a guano covered
island.
Two more
stops (S078 and
S079) and more C.
longistaminea and C. grandiflora, but these looked a bit different -
could there be intermediates between the two?
And so, back
for another night under canvas at 'Secret Valley'.
