Spider Flower

There are a number of strange and wonderful trees in the Peruvian Amazon, but this one, Herrania nitida, would always make me stop and stare (and usually take a picture) whenever I found it with flowers.  Known locally as cacahuillo (little cacao) or flor de araña (spider flower), the species produces small, edible fruits and a profusion of red, cauliflorous flowers that maybe look a little bit like spiders - if you squint. [NOTE: Herrania is in the family Sterculiaceae together with Theobroma cacao and T. grandiflorum     

The Importance of Looking Down

I am a firm believer in the idea that if you want to understand the future of a tropical forest - look in the understory (see Regeneration Surveys). Repeated observations of marked seedlings are the crystal ball (maybe Ouija Board is a better analogy) of forest dynamics.  A species may be represented by a large number of canopy trees at the moment, but if it doesn't have any seedlings or saplings established in the understory, it's days are numbered. Want to assess the sustainability of forest use?  Count seedlings.  Want to make imperceptible, lasting changes to forest composition?  Selectively weed the understory (see Tembawang). 

When you walk through a tropical forest, the natural tendency is to look up.  To scan the crowns for flowers and fruits (if collecting herbarium specimens) or to marvel at the size of the canopy trees (see Size Matters). Nothing wrong with this, but there may be more to be learned by looking down. [NOTE: The sapling with the orange flagging is Grias peruviana (see Grias Predated, Umberto Pacaya, and Varzea Still Life); I still have that machete].

Varzea Still Life

This little piece of forest floor in my Grias study site (see Grias Predated) caught my eye. Two beautiful sacha mangua (Grias peruviana) flowers artfully arranged on top of some huasai (Euterpe precatoria) leaves. [NOTE: The flowers were gone the next day].

Umberto Pacaya

Umberto Pacaya worked as my field assistant for three years in the Peruvian Amazon.  A resident of Jenaro Herrera, Umberto was a knowledgeable matero and a wonderful person.  I very much enjoyed working with him.  Couple of stories.  When I first started working in the flooded forests of the Ucayali River, I would occasionally use insect repellent to try to stop the onslaught of biting mosquitos. I offered some to Humberto one day, and he rubbed a little bit on the back of his neck.  The next day I asked him if he wanted some more and he politely refused saying that he was never going to use that stuff again. Seems he got in trouble with his wife when he came home from the field smelling of perfume...

I set up a study to measure fruit production by Myrciaria dubia (see Camu-Camu) in a local ox-bow lake. We had flagged all of the sample plants, and were gradually moving the flags up as the water level rose so we could see which plants we needed to harvest.  I was abruptly called back to Iquitos and left Umberto in charge of the study.  The next day, it started raining like crazy and our plants began to get flooded.  Umberto went out in a boat in the pouring rain, cut a bunch of poles, and propped up all of the sample plants to keep their fruits out of the water until I got back.  The final results from the fruit production study are here (thx, Umberto). [NOTE: Umberto is holding a sapling of Grias peruviana, another study species from the flooded forest].

Camu-camu

From 1984 to 1987, I lived and did research along the Ucayali River in the Peruvian Amazon.  One of my study species was a small riparian shrub, Myrciaria dubia HBK McVaugh, known locally as "camu-camu". The fruits of camu-camu have the highest concentration of Vitamin C of any fruit in the world.  Oranges have 30 mg of ascorbic acid/100 g of pulp, rose hips have about 100 mg, and camu-camu, in a class by itself, has 3,100 mg of ascorbic acid/100 g of pulp. The species grows in extremely dense stands along the banks of ox-bow lakes.  I ate a lot of camu-camu fruit while I was studying the ecology of this species.  It made blisters on my lips...but I never got a cold.

[NOTES: The second image shows a fruit collector in Supay cocha near my study site in Peru.  This picture was on the front page of the Washington Post (below the fold) on June 29, 1989.  All images were scanned from slides.]