Ecuador: August 6, 2006

just in town (quito) for the day.
spent most of it at the botanical gardens- freaking out on blooming orchids

gotta pack my bags for the jungle--leaving at 6´´45 tomorrow morning
plane then bus, then canoe --- woah! super remote

i didnt realize that the amazon basin still has 75 percent of its primary forest
all i´d ever heard about was how fast it was getting cut down.

so far been to cloud forest on the east and west sides of the andes and the high elevation moors or paramos.

cloud forest
east side wetter and more lush than the west side------the main weather patterns down here come from the east-----which affect precipitation and rain shadow etc.

who wouldá thought that the weather patterns would come from opposite directions in the southern hemishere?

at any rate lots of epiphytes, bromialads, orchids, etc.
families i dont know---ever the ones i do look super different---
epiphytic, tubular, humming-bird pollinated ericaceaes for example.
heliconias (bird of paradise relatives), coffee, palms, pineapples, papayas, clusias, tree ferns, the list goes on.....

poison dart frogs, leaf-cutter ants that collect leaves to feed the fungus that they raise in their nests.......dung beetles----the insects are incredible.
we actually saw a wolf spider grab a big ol moth out of thin air and devour it.

gesneraceae, melastomataceae, alstromeriaceae, cyclanthaceae, are just a few of the families that i didnt know

gunneraceae, bombaceae, heliconiaceae, are others that ive had little experience with.

while the rubiaceae, clusiaceae, orchidaceae, araceae all peak in diversity

paramo
here things are a little more familliar---
some families still look wierd---shrubby asteraceae
but ive been able to recognize a bunch of genera------valeriana, gnaphalium, etc.
its that whole thing about how the high elevations get lower toward the poles----
did i mention that this was all higher than you can get in oregon--aprox 1300 ft

the equator was a trip too
it may have been a hoax but we did see the water spiral in opposite direcrtions on opposite sides of the line.....

gotta run

nos vemo un rato

paz
t