Chile 2015

[DaveW]

Supposed to be giving it on November 2nd, which is why I have to stop here for the time being and start to process all the images for projection. There will virtually be no Other Succulents however Dot, mainly Copiapoa's, Eriosyce and Thelocephala's. Some of the Copaipo's are quite plentiful in places and in large clumps, so no danger from collectors, but viticulture, mining and road building can legally wipe out these areas. That's why I bang on how useless CITES is regarding species endangerment.

[Dot]

Hello Dave,

We are hoping to be at the Nottingham Branch meeting on 2nd November as we will be staying with Kath just then.

Looking forward to hearing your lecture,

[DaveW]

Had to stop to process 400 images to 1280 x 800 pixels maximum dimensions for projection. However from trials in the Photography Section it seems I can use them here without having to resize them again, so here goes.

From here on I am reserving the genus Eriosyce for the true Eriosyce sensu Backeberg, since the consensus is growing even among botanists that they do not really belong with the other genera Fred Kattermann lumped in with them. Therefore I am reverting back to Donald & Rowley's "Reunion of Neoporteria" (1966) and calling the rest Neoporteria, other than I still tend to use Thelocephala for the small often subterranean low growing species.

18/10/15 We then moved on to Samo Alto where we found the following.

There was a little variation in spination some being lighter than others.

There were some nice Eriosyce aurata's here too, from about football size to 16 inches or so across.

[DaveW]

18/10/15 We then moved onto another site near Hurtado where the Eriosyce were even larger.

Colin Cutler beside the plants for scale.

The spination on the plants ranged from a light golden brown to yellow here. The plants are around 18 inches in diameter.

I only found one plant like this atypical long densely spined one in the population.

Some had buds but no flowers or fruit.

It was notable that in these Eriosyce the lowermost spines were just as pristine as spines near the crown, with no fading or darkening, unlike the Neoporteria's. These plants were all pretty well perfect and would have taken "Best Plant In Show" at any cactus exhibition.

[DaveW]

This bird kept following us around.

Moving on to another site there were some of these wildflowers among the cacti. The "outer petals" are obviously bracts as in Poinsettia's since the small flowers are visible in the centre.

There we found another Eriosyce species showing some variation in spination.

[jfabiao]

Lovely pictures, Dave.

[DaveW]

Photography is easy on plants that big Jfabiao with modern digital cameras, but gets harder for small plants like Thelocephala's, as you will see later on. At home I always use a tripod to enable the use of smaller apertures for maximum depth of field, but did not want to carry one in habitat.

For simplicity as I was hand holding I used Shutter Priority so I did not get too low a shutter speed for hand holding, but it meant wider apertures. I also used autofocus for convenience which I usually avoid for close-up's. That meant really close up I was scratching for depth of field since autofocus does not always focus in the ideal spot to spread the depth of field over the subject. The human eyeball on the focusing screen beats autofocus every time for best use of depth of field.

We also found this Neoporteria there which I have not been able to name yet.

Some stronger spined than others.

Colin Cutler and Colin Norton with few Trichocereus on the hillside. More green plants around than in normal years since 2015 was the wettest year in Chile for about 50 years.

[Phil_SK]

I'm glad that photo processing is no longer holding up the pace of this travelogue!
I wonder if Colin and Colin's Trichocereus chiloensis might not be a Eulychnia, maybe E. acida?

[DaveW]

They could be Eulychnia's Phil, but there were no buds or flowers on them to confirm and Roger only had Trichocereus down on his list for this site so I called them Trichocereus.

19/10/15 We then moved on to Tololo where there were some beautiful Neoporteria eriosyzoides.

There was some variation in spine colour in the population.

[DaveW]

19/10/15 We moved on to another site near Huanta where we found more Neoporteria eriosyzoides growing in what appeared to be disintegrated granite. There was some variation in spine colour here also.

Some were quite brownish spined.