Ed. Note: NYBG Scientist and Assistant Curator, Institute of Systematic Botany, Paola Pedraza-Peñalosa recently returned from an expedition to the Colombian Andes where she was without electricity and the Internet. Upon returning to New York, she filed these briefs about her time in the field. Follow her journey on Plant Talk.
Standing in the dark.
The Andes mountain chain, which crosses South America from north to south, is the longest in the world. The Andean forests of the northern range (Tropical Andes hotspot) are home to a level of plant diversity that is without match anywhere else in the world; they are also subject to high rates of deforestation, thus these forests are considered a top priority for conservation. Unfortunately, Andean forests remain insufficiently studied and protected. This lack of baseline information is often times the first impediment to effective conservation: It is impossible to efficiently protect what we do not know or understand.
To help fill these gaps, The New York Botanical Garden and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia have formed a partnership in order to inventory all the species of ferns, gymnosperms, and flowering plants of Las Orquídeas National Park, a forest reserve strategically located in the confluence of the Andean and Chocó biogeographic regions of Colombia.
Clean and fresh travelers. First day, at La Encarnación. Top row: Alirio Montoya, Hector Velásquez, Javier Serna, Arley Duque, María Fernanda González, Camila González, Giovanny Giraldo, Fredy Gómez. Lower row: Felix Escobar, Julio Betancur, Paola Pedraza-Peñalosa.
January 24 – February 4: Plant inventory at Las Orquídeas National Park; Antioquia, Colombia
After 14 days collecting plants in the field, we returned to Bogotá, Colombia’s capital with nearly 700 plant collections, and more than 10,000 photographs. Behind us we left Las Orquídeas National Park‘s 32 thousand hectares of rare and endangered tropical and montane forests, which make it part of one of the most biologically rich ecosystems of the world: the Andean and Chocó forests. We left behind more than 2,000 species of vascular plants, some of them still unknown to the science and probably not found anywhere else.
Getting the mules and the equipment ready.
The following is an account of how we got there, what we did, and why what we found is important.
