POSTCARD from Mexico N°9

(By Fernando Rivadavia,  february, from 21 to 22, 2004) 

Dear friends,

It wasn't in my plans initially, but I ended up going Ping hunting this past weekend. I guess you could call it a warm-up session for the upcoming Ping trips. Some Brazilian friends are here in Mexico City and we were just gonna do some regular tourism. That was the plan, but I couldn't resist the urge...

On Saturday we all went to the ruins of Teotihuacan, just N of Mexico City. The highlights of this large archeological site are 2 huge pyramids, the pyramid of the moon and the pyramid of the sun (this one the 3rd largest in the world, at just over 70m in height!). It's really a fascinating place, a must for anyone coming to Mexico. We spent several hours there walking around visiting the numerous temples and climbing the pyramids.

By 3 in the afternoon we'd finished at Teotihuacan and my friends wanted to go back to Mexico City. It was a warm beautiful day with several hours of daylight to enjoy still. And I was only about an hour away from El Chico National Park... Luckily we'd gone in 2 cars, so I packed everyone up inside the other car and headed N on my own towards El Chico.

My 1st stop was Las Ventanas, only known location of P.crassifolia. This was the 3rd time I went there. The 1st was in September last year, when Ruben and Marlen took Ed and I to see our 1st wild Pings in Mexico. At that time of year, the rosettes were as large as they get and were clearly visible all over the cliffs. One plant was observed with a short flower scape emerging. I returned to this spot in December, hoping to see some flowers. The cliffs were no longer dripping with water and all the plants had shrunken into compact winter rosettes, many of which now had a young undeveloped scape among the succulent leaves. It was still too early for flowers. From the herbarium data I had, I knew P.crassifolia had been collected in flower from late March to late May. But maybe, just maybe, I'd be lucky enough to catch an early flower or two now in February...

It turned out that I found not one, nor two, nor three, but MANY open flowers! It seems that P.crassifolia begins flowering a bit earlier than previously believed. I saw many blooms, bright dark-pink beacons standing out on the cliffs. What fantastic flowers! The only problem is that they were all out of reach... I guess natural selection by curious tourist over the decades, plucking those beautiful flowers for their girlfriends (Mexicans are very romantic!) has eliminated plants growing near the base of the cliffs. But there was one spot Ruben and Marlen had showed us where there were numerous plants within easy reach of our cameras. I went to this place in hopes of finding open flowers, but instead only found a few nearly open blooms. Oh well... I did see the beautiful flowers of P.crassifolia, if only from a distance, so I guess I can't complain.

After over an hour walking around Las Ventanas, it was getting darker and I hurried on down the road towards a site where in September we'd discovered hundreds of P.moranensis growing on a rock wall dripping with water by the road. Among these, we'd found a smaller number of P.acuminata, with its large heart-shaped leaves at the tips of long petioles arising from a bulb buried deep within the wet mosses. I'd also visited this site in December, hoping to catch an early flower, but had only seen a few old sickly leaves of P.moranensis. My herbarium data indicated that P.acuminata flowers mostly between March and May, although there were 2 collections of flowering plants from February and even one from January.

Dense winter rosette of Pinguicula moranensis from El Chico.    Photo : F. Rivadavia

I arrived at the P.acuminata site and was surprised at how dry the place was, especially if one considering what it had been 5 months earlier. The weather was still cool just as before, but with no fog in sight now. I began searching the wall and was surprised that I couldn't find a single P.moranensis winter rosette, much less those of P.acuminata, which were surely hidden deep in the dry mosses. Well there were surely no flowers of P.moranensis, which I would've easily spotted from the car. But the flowers of P.acuminata were supposedly smaller and colored white to light-lilac or bluish. I began searching around, scanning the whole wall, hoping to find at least one P.acuminata flower, and praying for it not to be way up high out of reach.

Materializing like a wish made to a genie, there it was: a P.acuminata flower sticking out from the cliff at about the height of my head! And... well, I have to admit it was rather bland. The corolla was shaped more or less like that of P.agnata or P.mirandae, with a sharp bend in the tube just below the petal lobes. Most of the tube, all the way down to the spur, was a light-green almost yellowish color. I guess the only really interesting thing about the flower were the numerous long white hairs surrounding the entrance of the corolla tube. Otherwise, I guess you could call the flower of P.acuminata one of the ugly ducklings of the genus Pinguicula...  

On Sunday I had initially planned to go visit the monarch butterfly sanctuaries about 3h W of Mexico City, but my friends got lazy and decided instead to spend the afternoon in the famous anthropological museum in Mexico City. It's a fantastic museum, with a fascinating collection of prehispanic artifacts of numerous cultures from all over Mexico. But I'd already seen it in September and although I want to go back, it's not a place I was willing to waste a whole Sunday for. So I drove off on my own, heading S.

Once again it was a beautiful day and leaving Mexico City I had great views of the snowcapped "Popo" and "Izta" volcanoes, SE of the city, rising way above 5000m. I 1st drove to the Lagunas de Zempoala, a touristy area consisting of a lake surrounded by pine tree-covered mountains. But my interest here was mostly due to the numerous collections of P.moranensis and even P.parvifolia made there.

The road to Zempoala winded through some very nice mountaino scenery, all the way smelling strongly of Pings... but it was just not the right time of year. I stopped by the road several times, circled the lake, and although I saw some really good Ping habitats, there were not even signs of dead leaves. As I had foreseen and dreaded over the last 3 months of 2003, it would be very difficult to find new Ping sites once they'd retreated completely into their winter rosettes. I knew I had to find as many Ping sites as possible before they went dormant, so I could go back and search for flowers when these emerged.

I moved on towards Tepoztlan, a famous touristy town with some ancient ruins -- and where some Ping collections were made too. The town is located among some interesting rocky mountains with Popo in the background. Unfortunately it was a bit too touristy, with heavy traffic along the highway and to get into the city. So at one point I just gave up, turned around, and headed back to Mexico City.

Again I had a few hours of sunlight remaining, so... I went to visit my friend Adolfo Ibarra. I'd visited his place for the 1st time on Friday, on my way out from work. But it had been a last minute thing and I didn't have my camera with me -- which I deeply regretted since he has a wonderful Ping collection and lots were in flower. So as I drove into Mexico City Sunday afternoon, I called Adolfo up and invited myself to his place, which he kindly agreed to.

Where do I start?! Maybe I should 1st say that Adolfo built a greenhouse on his roof. Inside he has a humidifier pumping out water vapor, a fan to circulate air, tanks with water purifiers, and of course endless Pings (as well as Drosera, VFTs, Neps, orchids, and others). I'm sure the technology built in there is part of the reason why Adolfo is so successful with his Pings, but it's obvious the he’s also extremely sensitive to the needs of each plant, a very careful observer. He even treats Pings to a special diet of ground bugs and something else I can't remember, which he regularly mixes with water and litterally brushes over the leaves to make them grow bigger and faster.

I should also mention that Adolfo is, above all, a restless Ping hybridizer. He’s always attempting new crosses with whatever is in flower, marking the scapes with thin colorful wires (which can be spotted anywhere and everywhere in his greenhouse). He especially likes to use the various forms of P.agnata for his crosses, his favorite probably being what I call P.sp.Tlanchinol. This possible new species has flowers varying in color from almost completely white, to more or less decorated with purple, lilac, or even red markings around the entrance to the corolla tube and/or on the petal lobe tips.

One of my favorites among Adolfo’s hybrids is a cross between P.agnata "El Lobo” and P.hemiepiphytica, with beautiful pink flowers -- the largest-flowered Ping I've ever seen! Another very interesting cross he made is P.oblongiloba X P.sp.Tlanchinol with dark bluish-purple flowers. Talking about hybrids, Adolfo has been able to keep alive and even make leaf cuttings of P.gypsicola X P.takakii, a new hybrid we discovered together last November.

Other interesting things in Adolfo's collection were flowering P.potosiensis, which we'd collected in November. The plants were reduced to compact winter rosettes and each had 1-3 flowers, which were a dark purple color. I'm sorry to say I saw nothing that justifies a separation of these plants from P.moranensis... Also, one of the P.mirandae I'd collected in December was about to open a flower on a long scape maybe 10cm high. Talking about long scapes, the P.lilacina I'd collected in October were not only still alive but flowering like mad, with long scapes reaching maybe 15cm in height! Nevertheless I got the feeling that these plants were finally reaching the end of the line, the rosettes not too healthy and about to go through with their annual biological clock. Adolfo also showed me a really cool dormant rosette with beautiful purple colored leaves sunk into the soil of the pot. I don't remember where it was from, but Adolfo thinks it's a new species closely related with P.moranensis.  

In December Adolfo went on a Ping hunt with Sergio Zamudio to San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas. Their main objective was the famous P.sp.”Sierra Tamaulipas”. Although they didn't find this species, they did see P.cyclosecta, P.jamauvensis, and revisited a few places we'd found on our trip in November to San Luis Potosi. One of these was the P.gypsicola site, where they still found a late bloomer with an open flower. And now that Adolfo knew what P.takakii looked like, he realized we'd stepped right over these tiny critters while heading towards P.gypsicola.

Unfortunately the P.cyclosecta Adolfo collected with Zamudio had no open flowers, only dead ones and young buttons. But I was fascinated with it, I'd never seen this species before. The hairy compact winter rosettes were a beautiful gray-green-blue color and the closed flower buds showed a dark blue venation over a white background, the spur overall bluish. A beautiful species even in dormancy!

I forgot to say that Adolfo and Zamudio also revisited the site near Nuñez where we'd found what was either P.ehlersiae, P.debbertiana, or both. These are now flowering in Adolfo's collection, as were the P.jaumavensis they collected, plus the P.ehlersiae we'd collected near el Huizache. Hmmm, what can I say? I'm sure confused about the differences between P.ehlersiae, P.esseriana, and P.jamauvensis! Different species or a single very variable species?? Darker or lighter petals, with darker veins around the throat or without, wide or narrow petal lobes, with or without yellow marks near the throat entrance (or what appear to be 2 parallel stripes which may be white or yellowish)?? Very subtle and plastic characters even within the same populations. Take a look at the pics and take your guess!

Hopefully there'll be more stories to tell after next weekend...

Take Care,  

Fernando Rivadavia