In the Field: Garden Scientist Continues Reports from Brazil

Posted in Science on June 2 2010, by Plant Talk

Wayt Thomas, Ph.D., is the Elizabeth G. Britton Curator of Botany in the Institute of Systematic Botany.

Editor’s note: Botanical Garden scientist Dr. Wayt Thomas has been filing reports from the field in northeastern Brazil, where he has studied the flora of the Atlantic coastal forest for 20 years. Read his earlier posts from this trip.

Wednesday, 12 May (Continued): We went back to Serra Grande and had dinner with Daniel; we went to the central plaza in town and had acarajé, a Bahian specialty with African origins, and not for the diet conscious. It is a dumpling made of chickpea meal deep-fried in dendê (African oil palm) oil. After it is fried, it is split open and slathered with a combination of other Bahian specialties, including dried shrimp, salad, vatapá (another dish of African origin made of bread pudding with shrimp, coconut milk, peanuts and cashews), and hot pepper paste.

Thursday, 13 May: Today we started for the town of Jequié, but with a planned detour on the way. Leaving Serra Grande, we headed north toward the beach resort town of Itacaré, and then over the new bridge crossing the Rio de Contas (Pebble River). We turned east toward the Marau Peninsula, an area of intense beachfront development and, consequently, increasingly threatened native vegetation. The sandy savannas near the coast are called restingas and harbor a fascinating array of species, some also found in Brazil’s central highlands, others unique to Marau. In some cases, the restinga sands support forests—these, too, are home to fascinating species such as Griffinia espiritense, a lily with beautiful green-and-pink mottled leaves, or the strange Anthurium bromelicola, a slender vine that grows only out of the center of terrestrial tank bromeliads.

The town of Jequié is at the western edge of the coastal forest, at the boundary between forest and dry thorn scrub known as caatinga (it means “white forest,” which is what it looks like when it has lost its leaves). One of our collaborators, Dr. Guadalupe Macedo, is a professor at the State University of Southern Bahia, in Jequié. We drove the four hours west from Marau to Jequié to meet with her to discuss our joint project.

Friday, 14 May: This morning we met with Guadalupe and a woman who works with a local NGO conserving the region’s forests. We drove 18 km (about 11 miles) east and then south into the Estreito valley and drove about half an hour on the narrow dirt road linking all the valley’s farms. When we stopped, we saw the south-facing hillside covered in forest, our target. What looks to be a gently sloping valley, however, gets much steeper when you start walking up the hill. Even as we were walking through the lower, disturbed forest (it suffered from fire years earlier), it was apparent that this forest had never been the target of timber harvesters.

When the Portuguese colonized Bahia in the 1500s, they dictated that the best timber species were reserved for the Crown; these species became known as madeiras de lei (timbers of the law) and were selectively harvested. The most precious of these was Jacarandá da Bahia, Dalbergia nigra, a heavy, dark wood with fine texture and beautiful grain. It became so rare that is was placed in Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)—the only commercially valuable tree to be so designated. And here it was, scattered throughout this forest! We hiked up into the undisturbed forest and explored some more before heading back to Jequié

Saturday, 15 May: It doesn’t look that far on the map, but the state of Bahia is almost the size of France. So, the drive from Jequié back to Salvador took longer than we expected. It was a pretty drive, through the Jiquiriçá valley to Camamu and up to Itaparica, where we waited for the ferry (known as the “Ferry Boat”) back to Salvador. We thought we’d made it in time for the 2:45 p.m. ferry, but it filled up with cars and left early. We had to cool our heels until the 4:15 ferry, time enough to sample the wares of the street vendors selling beiju, small white crepes made of coarse tapioca flower, folded over like half-moons, and filled with grated fresh coconut and condensed milk—very nice, especially if you’re partial to coconut.

Sunday, 16 May: Catching up with e-mail and doing laundry.

Monday, 17 May: We spent the day at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), which will be the base for our joint project. Here I met with the students who will be working with the project and arranged our trip for the following day to the Guaribas Biological Reserve, named for the region’s Brown Howler Monkeys (Alouatta guariba).

Tuesday, 18 May: We left for the field at 7 a.m. and arrived at the field station about 9:30.

Wednesday, 19 May: Today was a regular “day at the office” at the Federal University of Paraíba, where I was given a space to work and WiFi access to the Internet. I was able to catch up on my e-mail and other work.

Lunch, however, was special. Like in the United States, Brazil is a huge country of immigrants. While its overall percentage of Asian immigrants is the same, most are of Japanese origin. So we were able to go to an ordinary shopping mall near the university and get very reasonable sushi, but with a Brazilian spin: sushi with cream cheese, or dessert sushi with strawberries or guava paste. After lunch we went to one of João Pessoa’s hidden treasures, G. Vitorino’s ice cream shop in the Mangabeira neighborhood. The list of varieties is outstanding, and it also has a Brazilian flavor: In addition to the old standbys like chocolate, vanilla, and coffee, they have a huge list of flavors derived from widespread tropical crops such as avocado, cassava, green corn, rapadura (unrefined sugar), and tapioca; and tropical fruits such as acerola, brazil nut, coconut (green, regular, and toasted), guava, guava cream, jackfruit, mango, passion fruit, and tamarind. They also have some local fruits that are little known elsewhere, like mangaba (a restinga shrub with a fruit that has a fresh, strawberry-like quality), caja (a small, orange fruit in the mango family), and cashew fruit (not the nut, but the enlarged stem behind the nut, which is very popular in Brazil and has an astringent, citrus-like taste). I had three flavors, tapioca, toasted coconut, and green coconut, and tasted several others, coffee, cheese (weird, but interesting), cassava, and doce de leite. All flavors are excellently prepared, fresh, creamy, and with rich and subtle flavors.