Next morning we continued our way on Highway 105 towards Molango. Just before the city a small gravel road led towards Eloxochitlán, where there is, at least for me, the most interesting site of P. moranensis. Already in the past some collectors introduced plants from this location under the name 'ANPA' into cultivation. In 2005 Peter found an all white flower there and introduced it under the name 'Molango, white flower'. But this site has much more to provide. At one spot along the road on a large and quite high calcerous cliff, which was wet, thousands of plants were growing on this eroded wall. Not only the flower diversity was huge, showing flowers with pure white, whitish with violet spots, medium violet, darker violet, magenta or even dark pinkish clour. Also the summer leaf forms were very diverse.

Smaller to big, rounded to elongated, green to reddish and all intermediate types could be found there growing side by side. I don't know of any site of P. moranensis that show the same diversity.

It was hard to leave that place, but we needed to head further north to the village of Tlanchinol. At about 1200 m altitude in a subtropical cloud forest, ther was growing on a kind of agglomerated stone a species which was described in 2005 for the first time under the name P. ibarrae. The plants grew only at 2 spots along the road on vertical cliffs together with Selaginella sp., other mosses and grasses, where there was a high degree of erosion. During heavy rains it is very likely that plants get washed of the wall, as the substrat was often very lose. The plants were all in summer rosette and the colour of the leaves varied from green to red (must be genetic, as light conditions were almost similar for all plants. While in 2005 in May it seemed that flowering season has just ended (we only found some plants still in flower), this time in August the flower season had not started yet. Only 2 plants were showing an open flower, on the other plants not even flower buds were visible (Zamudio mentioned flower period from September to March). Just seeing the flowers, it was not easy to see a difference to P. agnata, but like P. pilosa, P. ibarrae has obovate summer leaves with an upturned margin, which easily differentiate it from P.agnata. Also habitat is very different.

Then we continued our trip towards Xilitla, San Luis Potosí. On the map there was a road which looked like a short cut towards Xilitla. But in Mexico, be careful with short cuts, as short not always means faster. And in addition, if you don't know the Mexican word "tope" you will find out very soon what it means when you take secondary roads.

We passed by Xilitla and the Sierra Gorda (Sierra Gorda? Isn't this the location of the new species P. martinezii and P. calderoniae? Yes, it's true. And we went there as well. But the story of that trip I would like to tell in my last postcard. Sorry, but you have to wait until the end!!).

Continuing road 120 towards Jalpán, Querétaro, just after the highest point of the road, the landscape and climate was changing dramatically. It now had more xerophytic vegetation, very dry landscape even in August, and along the road you could see again cacti and Agave in a more shrub and small tree dominated vegetation. You would not expect any Pinguicula here, but they are there as well! Beside some few spots with P. moranensis (which is the plants that are in cultivation under the name P. moranensis 'La Vuelta') there were thousands of P. agnata plants on the cliffs (created during road constructions) and above.

The substrate was bone dry and you wonder how this species can grow here.

But if you know P. agnata, even the summer leaves are quite fleshy and can store a lot of water (looks more like a succulent plant). The humidity probably comes mainly from the clouds and fogs, that are developing in the late afternoon and the morning. As the upper village is called El Lobo, plants entered in cultivation are named P. agnata 'El Lobo'. Also here the plants were variable in colour, leaves colouration varied from geen-yellowish to brown-reddish. At this time of the year all plants were in summer rosette, but unfortunately P. agnata is flowering in winter, so again we have seen no flowers. It is strange that this species was considered to produce only summer leaves. In May 2005 most of the plants have shown much smaller and compact rosettes. The winter leaves of the "El Lobo" site showed sporadically also glands on the winter leaves (while the P. agnata specimens from other locations had only glandless, hairy winter leaves).

Once arrived in Jalpán, we turned north again on highway 69 towards San Luis Potosí. Unfortunately we could not see the P. lilacina site along the road, as a flat tyre forced us to stop quite some time. As the rainy season here was much delayed, would we then see further north P. gypsicola already in flower ?

More about it soon. (Next postcard)

Oliver