Today's
mission was always going to be a tricky one, considering what we had
seen (or rather, had not seen) yesterday in Quebrada San Ramon. We
were going to look for the recently described
Copiapoa aphanes. The original
description compares it to C. grandiflora, which grows some 100
km further south, near Esmeralda. However, C. montana, which I
believe to be a candidate of being lumped into C. grandiflora,
grows not too far away, north of Taltal, with another candidate, C.
olivana, a little bit farther north. Rudolf Schulz and
Ricardo Keim are among others who have seen the plant and dismissed it
as a flower colour variant of C. rupestris (=C. taltalensis)
that grows only some 200 m from where they had found the new taxon.
The other differences mentioned fall comfortably within the boundaries
of variability that can so often be observed in Copiapoa
habitats. Why had the close proximity to C. taltalensis in
habitat not
been mentioned in the article containing the original description?
We had already seen C. rupestris and C.
grandiflora on this trip, but the plants had not been in flower,
so even if we were to find Copiapoa aphanes, how would we
recognise it without flowers?
We had descriptive
information and felt confident that we could find the habitat without
a GPS. Our first attempt (S569) resulted in us finding some
Eriosyce rodentiophila, always a nice plant to see, but not what
we were after.
We turned left on to
another track going west, but that was obviously a mistake, as it
joined up again with the main Taltal to Pan-Am road. Juan and Bart
decided to have a look higher up on the hills anyway - you never know
what you might find at the top, as Paul Hoxey had proven further south
with C. humilis ssp. australis. However, this time
(S570) we drew a blank, apart from some knocked about C. cinerea.
We decided to go back to
the previous stop and follow the original path further. Juan &
Florencia had been here before and had found another interesting plant
on that occasion. We walked around (S571), nose close to the ground,
but it took a while for Angie to accidentally locate the first of
these 'interesting cactus'. She was taking pictures of C. cinerea,
always an enjoyable way to pass the time when Juan walked by and
pointed out that Angie was actually standing on what he had hoped to
show us: Eriosyce occulta. The specific name means 'hidden' and
was certainly justified as the plants were almost completely hidden in
the angular gravel that covered everything. Juan had spotted a fruit
poking out above the stones and its elliptical shape had stood out
among the angular stones.
As soon as we had grouped
around, to take its picture, we started to find 'our own' plants. This
plant was by no means rare, at least not in the area of a couple of
hundred square meters that we examined. Another interesting find
included some tiny plants of C. cinerea, just over 2 cm (1
inch) in diameter. It is thought that Copiapoa are on a long slow road
to extinction, with current climatic conditions unable to support any
germinated seed to a size that is capable to withstand the drought
until the next short-lived rain event.
We had another stab at
looking for C. aphanes, a few km further along the track (S572)
and while some of the descriptions of the habitat location fitted,
others did not. We climbed to the crest of a low hill and at last
found a plant that I can only identify as C. taltalensis, as it
was not in flower. Short of digging the plant up and taking it home to
see if it will flower to reveal its true identity, its scientific name
will remain a mystery, but that is part of the fun....
I accidentally dropped my
camera lens cap and found more E. occulta. Hardly surprising,
as the habitat conditions were very similar to the previous stop, but
still nice to be able to collect the photographic evidence.
