I once asked Ritter why
he had found so many species of cacti while other collectors had
discovered significantly fewer numbers. He replied that these
other gentlemen had not made the difficult and dangerous climbs
that he had undertaken, to where he had found his most unusual
plants. He has climbed hundreds of hills and mountains with often
as only result the find of an old, long forgotten species or a new
discovery, but only on around 1 in ten of such climbs.
For us, it was relatively
straight forward as Ritter would take us straight to our goal,
although there were moments when I could hardly muster the courage
and strength to climb any higher. Only the burning passion for our
plants provided the energy to go on.
Especially when, high in
the hills, we unexpectedly came across mounds of Copiapoa
krainziana, for me one of the most beautiful Copiapoa
discovered to date. Small imported plants or seedlings provide
an impression of what these plants look like in nature, but this
image bears little resemblance to reality, at least not for me.
Beautiful large groups, with dense and long spination, varying in
colour from almost snow white, to light grey, to light bluish to
dark grey transformed the slopes along a steep sided valley into a
true cactus paradise. Such memories last a life time. And
although, during the long and steep descend on the return journey,
I had a bad fall in the middle of fantastic groups of
Copiapoa cinerea, where it appears I paid more attention to
the plants than to the difficult descend, the C. krainziana
experience would never be erased from my memory.
On 24 January, we
continued along the rather steep Ocean shore where we found Copiapoa cinera var. albispina
and, in huge numbers, the rather widely distributed Copiapoa haseltonia,
of which we were able to take some beautiful photographs and to
collect lots of seeds. More inland, we found Copiapoa humilis,
which occurs in much smaller numbers than I had imagined. Pyrrhocactus paucicostatus var. viridis
is another plant that is less abundant than I had assumed.
Higher up the hill we found groups of Copiapoa gigantea. Backeberg
had discovered this plant at night, during a trip by taxi to
Taltal. The differences with C. haseltonia can only
be described as minimal.
We had to make a
difficult climb to reach the dusty places in between rocks, were Ritter's Pyrrhocactus cachitaensis var.
elongatus and the variety densispinus
grow. Gradually we reached 2,000 m altitude in the desert hills
where the only plants found were Copiapoa
eremophila, after which it was 'total desert'.
After a long drive we had
to leave the Pan Americana for the umpteenth time to reach the
habitat of, amongst others, Copiapoa (Pilocopiapoa)
solaris.
