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OUR MAN IN THE ANDES
by C. N. Wills, Jr.
Many of our members may have wondered, as I did, what happens to the funds we have appropriated for "plant imports" and "plant collecting". For instance, we are sponsoring, to the tune of almost $3,000, the participation of Honolulu Botanic Gardens in the University of California's Seventh Botanical Expedition to the South American Andes. The director of this expedition is Paul G. Hutchison, senior botanist at the University of California Botanical Garden on the Berkeley campus. He is "our man in the Andes". He was joined by J. Kenneth Wright, a graduate student in zoology on the Berkeley campus, who serves as expedition zoologist and general assistant.
In addition to our sponsorship, the expedition is also receiving funds from the Strybing Arboretum Society; the Chicago Natural History Museum; the Associates in Tropical Biogeography at Berkeley, University of California Botanical Garden, Herbarium, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and the Department of Entomology on the Berkeley Campus. Also funds have been donated by many private individuals with an interest in the expedition's work.
We hear from Paul fairly often, as mail winds out from the interior ax wings across the Pacific, and his letters and field reports are crammed with botanical interest and humorous incidents in the life of "our man in the Andes". It has come to the attention of the Board of Trustees that many of our members would be interested in what takes place on a field trip of this sort. So to satisfy the amateurs in our body and pique the curiosity of our professionals, I propose to put a series of reports in our Newsletter composed of quotes from Paul's letters and reports on what goes on in the Andes, and comments from the Honolulu Botanic Gardens staff as to what kinds of plants we are receiving as our share of the expedition's collecting and how they are faring.
Paul stopped off on his way to Peru last November at a little town in Colombia called Bitaco, to investigate a plant collecting source, for which we appropriated $100 to cover a shipment of sample plants. The nursery is owned and run by a man named Kyburz who... with Dr. Idrobo of the Universidad Nacional (Bogota) met us at the airport. Our official visas whisked us thru customs in a flash, ahead of everyone, to our amazement and to the bewilderment of passengers. Kyburz's place is not in Cali, but 12 hours away, over the western cordillera on the Pacific slopes, where his small finca of over 10 hectares (about 25 acres) is largely wild. The nursery consists of cleared forest floor where introductions are established. The native vegetation is superb, and I've made extensive pressed and living collections with Dr. Idrobo's help this past week. Dr. Idrobo is a keen botanist and one of Colombia's leading biologists, specializing in Marantaceae and allies. We are getting a good group of Maranthia, Heliconia, and Aroids together, which Kyburz will ship with what I have taken.
"The marvel of the visit was in finding Kyburz not in Cali, but in a botanically unexplored valley, and with his and Dr. Idrobo's vast knowledge of native flora to assist in choosing and naming plants. We have been twice to Bagua Valley and made general collections. It is a wonderland of xerophytic plants (Ed. note - drought-resistant plants) - a new species of Melocactus, a Cephalocereus, an Acanthocereus or Armatocereus, two Opuntias, a Hylocereus, magnificent Bromeliads, an Agave (probably new) and a magnificent series of shrubs. One is a Malphigiaceae with fine pink flowers and a brilliant scarlet berry. The valley is in peak flower now. I noted a Tillandsia, terrestrial, with leaves two feet long, and a red spike to six feet with deep blue flowers and purplish bracts, but no seed, so will try to find small ones to send. Furcraeas, pilea, peperomia,
