It was again a case of 'Leave at 8 from the Copec'. Rudolf, Ricardo and Ingrid also came by, although we had already said our good byes and 'see you again's the previous night at Club Taltal. Time had come for the group to break up with 4 car parties (Flo & Juan, Ian's Big Green, Mike's Big Red and Trevor, Leo and I in our once white 4x4) returning to the south. Bart & Marijke would join us for just one more day and night.

We decided to make the best of the journey home with a quick detour through the Pan de Azucar National park, making two stops: S689, for more pictures of Copiapoa cinerascens and S690, just outside the Park's southern entrance, for the Copiapoa serpentisulcata stop that I had missed on the way north at the beginning of the trip that I had promised Leo to make on the way back.  We put the cameras away and went to the many cafés and restaurants near the petrol stations on Ruta 5 at Chañaral for lunch.

Back on the road, S691 was nothing more than a marker for a future trip. We would have to wait another three and a half hours before the next stop (S692), along the track from Ruta 5 to Carrizal Bajo, for Juan and Florencia to show us some more 'Thelocephala' (Eriosyce. ?aerocarpa?), growing near the site of a deserted processing plant, although no-one could tell what used to be processed here.

We were keen to get to our campsite for the night so moved on to S693/S694, where last year we had taken that Copiapoathon's group photo (S587). The Copiapoa dealbata looked still as spectacular as ever. This year we were camping and the ground near the dealbata's was just too rocky to put our tents on. So we moved on, further into the quebrada where the sand in the river bed provided a suitable base for our sleeping quarters.  A couple of foxes supervised the operation and would watch over us throughout the night.

While the available daylight was still good enough for photography, I concentrated on the other large clumps of Copiapoa that were present here: C. echinoides. Earlier on the trip, north of Cifuncho, I had found it difficult to believe that the plants we were looking at were Copiapoa rupestris, when to me they were difficult to tell apart from C. marginata that was not reported as growing in this area. Here I had the same problem again - C. echinoides was growing in large clumps and the stems were tall and erect and again looked more like C. marginata. As soon as I was re-united with a large screen or digital projector, I'd have to carefully study these plants in detail side by side to mark down the distinguishing features, or refer to their original descriptions to see which they resembled the most. I believe that fellow Copiapoathoners had collected seed from all three 'species' at the populations concerned and it would be interesting to see how they grew in identical conditions.

A quick glance at the description for C. echinoides states that it comes from Bolivia. Although the northern part of Chile would have belonged to Bolivia at the time that the description was issued, it is unlikely that plants that are referred to this taxon today ever occurred that far north. The description of the plant however best fits C. echinoides as w e know it today, with a distribution area from north of the Rio Huasco to south of Caldera, but calls for plants with 8-13 ribs, 5-7 radial spines and a single central spine, porrect, to 3 cm in length. The stems are said to be green in colour and very woolly at the apex. Wool is seldom found on plants growing in habitat as the elements and wildlife soon remove it. Hummingbirds seem particularly keen to collect the apical wool from cacti to build their nests.

Here, the number of ribs exceeded the maximum number of 13, with 20 being a more typical rib count. Perhaps Ritter had a point in rejecting this old name and usig C. cuprea and C. dura for the plants from this area.

In 1981, Nigel Taylor wrote: 'The above [C. echinoides] are closely allied to, and perhaps not specifically distinct from, C. marginata. C. rupestris is also related, and may be referable here, but it comes from much farther north.' SO perhaps this is a path to follow. And is C. rupestris really synonymous with C. taltalensis? I know that Rudolf has a theory that they are not; that C. horniloensis and C. taltalensis are likely the same thing, but that C. rupestris and C. desertorum are different from these taxa. Shame we didn't find time for some in debt discussions around this topic - one of the disadvantages of large groups I guess.  

In an early edition of the Chileans (Volume 13, # 45:129) Roger Ferryman writes of C. carrizalensis, a name that was regarded as synonymous with C. dealbata when I became interested in the genus. Again, a quick look at the original description certainly provides a better fit for the rib count (15-24) and the picture accompanying the description, although in black and white, is also a good likeness. So why is it regarded as synonymous with dealbata? More reading to do later. Add another side to the octagonal Copiapoa-ID-dice?! There seems to be a great risk of me becoming a splitter, or are they all one highly variable species?