We
spent the morning doing a spot of shopping and sightseeing in
Taltal. I took many digital images, so that I could show the changes
and progress to my companions from previous Copiapoathons and to capture the
current look and feel of the town so that I can use it as a basis for comparison
for future visits.
After
lunch, the cacti and the desert called again and we decided to go and have
another look at in the Quebrada los Zaniones (S289),
to the east of Cifuncho and to the south of Taltal. We had been here twice
before this week -
S260 (10 October) and S275
(13 October) and on previous trips (S052 and
S070 in 2001 and S128 in 2003).
There are two different Copiapoa here - C. columna-alba with
plenty of flowers and fruits in 2001 and 2003 and a plant that forms large
mounds of small, tight heads that on those earlier visits had not been in flower
and that we had identified as C. desertorum. These days, this is regarded
to be synonymous with (or at most a form of) C. rupestris. C. rubriflora
also comes from the area between Cifuncho and Taltal and again has been lumped
in with C.rupestris. To add to the confusion, I gather that all three
taxa are to be moved to synonymy under C. taltalensis, an earlier name
described by Werdermann.
Earlier
in the week, we had seen these plants in bud and in flower and they had looked
pinkish - red. So why am I so fascinated by these plants? Because Copiapoa have
yellow flowers, although their buds often have a red appearance before the
flower has fully developed. So Copiapoa have the ability to produce red
pigmentation in their flowers. From my observations of plants in cultivation in
the UK, I noted that the degree to which this pigmentation is present can vary
from plant, irrespective of what species it belongs to and can also vary from
flower to flower on the same plant between different times of the year. The
depth of the (pinkish) red colour also seems to vary during the duration that
the flowers are open. So, if the pinkish-red flower colour is not limited to a
single species, what plant did Ritter use this name for and where did it grow?
This
is not the place to discuss this issue in any detail, so I'll cover it in a
separate message at some time in the near future.
Having
taken pictures of all the plants on which we could find buds and or flowers (and
also having checked them in vain for seed), we decided to take a look at
Cifuncho and to follow the track that leads north along the bay to
S290,
marked on our topo-maps as Punta Garcia at Bahia Lavata. Here we found C.
rupestris, but as there were no buds or flowers, we could not exclude the
possibility that these might have 'rubriflora'.
Next
we followed a track to the south-east of Cifuncho but this came to a halt where,
it seemed quite some years ago, a landslide had blocked off the valley (S291).
We looked around for cacti, but only found a couple of 'lost' C. columna-alba
and a few individual Eriosyce rodentiophila.
That
evening we enjoyed our last meal in Club Taltal and looked forward to the next
day, when we would drive to Copiapó and meet up with some Dutch friends, Bart
and Marijke Hensel. So we were a little surprised that they walked through the
door at Club Taltal as we were tucking into our deserts.
