To
a Dutchman, used to much of the rainfall in western Europe passing
through the country on its way to the North Sea, the Rio Huasco is a
bit of an 'also ran'. Yet, despite low water levels, now controlled by
a dam at the Embalse Santa Juana, the significance of the river to the
area, now and historically should not be underestimated. Like the Rio
Elqui to the south and the Rio Copiapó to the north, their waters have
been managed and irrigation miracles have created huge oases,
providing work for the people living in the respective valleys, often
in agriculture with cultivation of fruit, in particular grapes,
contributing to the ever growing stream of fine Chilean wines that we
enjoy back home. In the case of the Rio Huasco, the harvest also
ncludes olives.
In 'Copiapoalogy', the
Rio Huasco is significant in that it seemingly presents a natural
border between the C. coquimbana group and 'the other, more
interesting' Copiapoa to the north. Sadly, the
future of the river is under threat, due to advances in world
technology and global economic pressures - gold has been found high up
in the Andean peaks, partly underneath the ice of an icefield that is the
source of much of the water that makes the Rio Huasco valley such a
green oasis. There is a proposal, the
Barrick Gold's Pascua Lama Project, to dig for gold 300 m below the
permafrost that has been there for who knows how many millions of
years, with assurances from the international mining companies that
they can do this without any impact on the environment. Exact
information (as provided by the various parties concerned) can be
found by means of a search on Google.
Our goal today was to
travel inland, along the valley, and look for Copiapoa near
Alto del Carmen, arguably the furthest east / furthest away from the
coast / highest altitude Copiapoa. We then intended to travel
further in land to San Felix, as once upon a time, I had a Copiapoa
in my collection with a label that proclaimed 'Copiapoa sp. de San
Felix'. Unfortunately, we failed - again - this time, unable to find
the road east out of Vallenar. Yes, I know - sounds pathetic. The road
out of Vallenar to the south and east lead us to the area where in
2001 we had photographed and reported C. coquimbana growing in
an area destined for building development. This time (S524) there were
large numbers of new houses and a large school complex. But had
somebody read my report (unlikely) and taken note? More likely, the
good citizens of Vallenar are conscientious, environment aware people
who had rescued hundreds of plants and had planted them in a sloping
area along the new road that we had christened 'the south Vallenar by
pass', leading up the hill to the old airport, the TL for Ritter's
C. vallenarensis.
We asked directions and
learned that the road to Alto del Carmen runs north of the river, so
it was back to the Puente Brasil across the river and sure enough, an
old road sign pointed right to Alto del Carmen. However, it seemed to
be the only remaining sign as all options leading from it terminated
in dead ends. After some 2 hours of circling around the town, we
ended up back on Ruta 5, this time having left Vallenar by the north
exit. We decided to spend the day in Huasco instead.
We have a regular stop
across the bridge at Maitencillo, nick named 'the power station stop',
due to the electricity substation that hums quietly to the south. Here
grow C. alticostata and E. (Thelocephala) lembckei. We
decided to pay another visit (S525). In 2004, we were alarmed by
expansion of new housing development and, further along the road to Huasco, of the ever increasing agricultural development. On that
occassion, we drove down the track sign posted to Agua del Ojo and
shown on the map as leading to Mina Algarrobo and stopped at km 2.5
and at km 5, to see our cacti in much better shape and seemingly in
much less threatened locations. I wanted to show Angie these locations
and explore the track further. It was quite busy, with heavy lorries
rolling by, covering us in dust. Where did they come from and where
had they been? We decided to make our next stop at km 10, but this
became km 13. S526 records images taken from S525 to km 13. From km 7,
hundreds of men were working intensively, digging trenches, laying
pipes and cables and doubling the width of the track. At km 13 the
development petered out for now and we took lots of pictures of the
Eulychnia (E. acida) and C. coquimbana forms.
S527
and S528 were on the way back to Maitencillo - rocky outcrops that, so
far, had been left in tact.
And so on to Huasco,
where last time (2004) some local rains had transformed otherwise
barren hill sides overlooking the smoke belching dragon at Puerto
Guacolda into something resembling a Dutch bulb field. This time we
actually drove right up to the gates of the 'dragon', where Angie took
pictures of the signs to answer my long standing questions as to the
nature of the business of the monster - thermo electricity generation.
We drove back to our
usual spot, at the base of Cerro Colorado overlooking Bahia Guacolda
and made two stops, S529, just above our usual place at
S530, the last
stop today. Whereas the Eriosyce (Thelocephala) napina had been
near bursting following the 2004 shower, now they were mostly
shrinking back and a lot more difficult to spot. In contrast, the
other cacti (Copiapoa fiedleriana, Eriosyce (Neoporteria) villosa
and E. crispa and Eulychnia breviflora and Echinopsis
(Trichocereus) sp.) were all much easier to find than in 2004 when
they had been hidden among dense annual and perennial vegetation. The
Copiapoa were in flower and I struggled in the firm breeze to take
close up pictures of flower cross-sections.
Since my interest in the
genus Copiapoa started, before the 2001 Copiapoathon, I argued that
the genus was just a single, highly variable species, in the hope that
experts would tell me why this was not so. Not much useful feedback
came back, but in collecting the original descriptions, it seemed that
'flower shape' can vary from 'funnelform' to 'campanulate' or bell
shaped to cup shaped; terms mostly translated from Latin descriptions
by original authors of German origin. Personally, I have been rather
sceptical of such claims. Although I have seen all these shapes in the
Copiapoa in my collection, they seemed to occur rather randomly
among all the taxa and even on different flowers on the same plant, so
of no diagnostic value. Although this theory has gained some support
during Copiapoa discussions with friends over many bottles of (red)
wine (Chilean of course), there is no evidence to back it up. While
Benjy Oliver has been busy photographing cross sections of flowers of
his own ex-habitat-seed raised plants in his collection, I wanted to
do the same for flowers encountered in nature. The plan is to create a
table of taxa with thumbnails, leading to full size images, of flower
cross sections together with the words used in their original
descriptions for the flower shape. The table will be added to my
website at www.copiapoa.info so
that visitors to the website can make up their own minds.
We had brought graph
paper along, to use a consistent scale and back ground for these
pictures, including some laminated sheets to stop the wind blowing the
paper away. Good thought! However, I need to bring some 'blue tack' or
super glue in future to stop the wind blowing the flowers off the
sheet before their picture has been taken. As a result, I have more
successful shots of hummingbirds visiting various shrubs than of
Copiapoa flower sections on graph paper. The make-shift solution
was to pin the flowers on to the spines of the mother plant, but this
does not provide a consistent scale. Could do better next time.
The limited results to
date of this little project confirm my gut feel that flower shape is
of no diagnostic value for the taxa that we saw in flower in 2006. But
there are still many taxa that we did not see this time or that were
not in flower.
I have a similar theory
about Copiapoa fruit, usually hidden among the felt in the apex, but
where Roy Mottram has argued that fruits can differ. Unfortunately,
his article is illustrated with a small number of examples of
cultivated plants, many with unreliable KK number origins. I intend to
create a similar table to that for the flowers on the website. This is
something for which I ask support from anyone who has pictures from
reliable, documented ex-habitat material to contribute to these
projects.
As we had booked for
another night at the hotel in Vallenar and had left the majority of
our luggage there, we had to drive the 50 km + back, but would return
to Huasco later on in the trip.
