{"id":964,"date":"2014-03-03T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=964"},"modified":"2014-03-03T16:36:57","modified_gmt":"2014-03-03T21:36:57","slug":"the-rose-of-el-queremal-a-not-so-modern-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/03\/the-rose-of-el-queremal-a-not-so-modern-love-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rose of El Queremal: A Not-So-Modern Love Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annie Virnig is a graduate student in the Commodore Matthew Perry Graduate Studies Program at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"Quereme\"<\/a>\u201cThe beauty of this species is its undoing,\u201d\u00a0wrote\u00a0New York Botanical Garden botanist James Luteyn\u00a0in 1983\u00a0regarding\u00a0this flower, which is native to the Andean cloud forests of Colombia. Since then, his words have only become truer.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0founders\u00a0of El Queremal<\/a> in southwestern Colombia were inspired to name the town\u00a0in honor of this beautiful and intoxicatingly fragrant flower that grows there, called quereme de la rosa<\/em> by locals and known scientifically as Cavendishia adenophora<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Long before settlers reached El Queremal, the indigenous people of the area, the Anaconas,\u00a0valued quereme de la rosa <\/em>and\u00a0believed it to be a charm for\u00a0love and enchantment. The story goes that if a woman wears the quereme <\/em>flower, its beautiful fragrance will inspire men to fall in love with her and women to be drawn to her in friendship. Likewise, if a man wears the flower in his lapel, women will flock to him. One story told in El Queremal involves\u00a0a man who could not\u00a0rid himself of the women who pursued him after he wore the quereme<\/em>,\u00a0so he ran away to live the rest of his days deep in the rainforest.
\n
\nQuereme de la rosa<\/em>\u00a0belongs to one of many closely related species of the plant family Ericaceae (the blueberry family), all called\u00a0queremes<\/em>, with great cultural and economic significance for the population of El Queremal. I saw\u00a0queremes\u00a0<\/em>firsthand and learned about their cultural and ecological importance\u00a0last July on an\u00a0expedition to El Queremal\u00a0with Dr. Ina Vandebroek<\/a>, a\u00a0Botanical Garden scientist who studies ethnobotany, or how people use\u00a0plants.\u00a0Now, as a second-year student in the Graduate Studies Program, I am developing my doctoral research to study these quereme<\/em> species with an interdisciplinary perspective, including\u00a0their chemical and genetic properties, their evolutionary relationships, and the cultural and economic roles they play in people’s lives.<\/p>\n

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One focus of my interdisciplinary doctoral research will be to investigate the history of the cultural use and local classification of quereme de la rosa <\/em>and other quereme <\/em>species important in the area, showing the degree to which quereme <\/em>species recognized locally correspond to scientifically recognized botanical (Linnaean) species. I also hope to work with both quereme <\/em>collectors and local conservation organizations, identifying points of tension between conservation ethics and conservation practices to inform future initiatives to help these species survive.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
An El Queremal local with a bundle of various quereme species<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Because of their ecological and socioeconomic importance, conservation of the queremes<\/em> is becoming an urgent issue. They occupy an extremely restricted natural range in the microhabitats characteristic of the Choc\u00f3 bioregion along the Colombian Pacific coast and are found nowhere else. During\u00a0the last 50 years they have been overharvested\u00a0because of the demand for them in\u00a0markets across Colombia.\u00a0The tension here between their role as a cultural symbol and as an economic mainstay is evident. Despite the\u00a0local desire to\u00a0harvest the plants sustainably\u2014a goal that has been aided by recent cultivation of several species\u2014they\u00a0are becoming increasingly rare in their native habitat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This intoxicating flower was once considered all but a love potion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[271,272,8,270,61],"yoast_head":"\nThe Rose of El Queremal: A Not-So-Modern Love Story - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/03\/the-rose-of-el-queremal-a-not-so-modern-love-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Rose of El Queremal: A Not-So-Modern Love Story - Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This intoxicating flower was once considered all but a love potion.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/03\/the-rose-of-el-queremal-a-not-so-modern-love-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-03-03T16:00:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-03-03T21:36:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Quereme.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"380\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"323\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Annie Virnig\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/\",\"name\":\"Science Talk Archive\",\"description\":\"Exploring the science of plants, from the field to the lab\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/03\/the-rose-of-el-queremal-a-not-so-modern-love-story\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Quereme.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Quereme.jpg\",\"width\":380,\"height\":323},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/03\/the-rose-of-el-queremal-a-not-so-modern-love-story\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/03\/the-rose-of-el-queremal-a-not-so-modern-love-story\/\",\"name\":\"The Rose of El Queremal: A Not-So-Modern Love Story - 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