Paramo Lithophytes

When you get "down" to about 12-

11000ft, orchids become more varied and common. Venturing off the trail to explore rock faces such as the one

in the photo below, reveal a hand-full of lithophitic species. A few species of Stelis, Pachyphyllum, and

a few other pleurothallids grow from mossy cracks in rocks. The little vandacious Pachyphyllum always seem to be in every stage of budding, seeding

and blooming at the same time. These orchids are easy to find if you look in

the right places but if you really want to see their flowers, a magnifying lens is

nescesary. I carry a "loupe" which is a very small but very powerful magnifying glass, and its small enough that I can wear it around my neck. The clump of Pachyphyllum must be dozens of years old yet it is only about6 inches tall and each growth is about 1/2 inch wide! The Stelis too can be very miniscule. I found a species with leaves only half an inch tall and flowers so small that even the loop didnt show much. They are known for being extremely difficult to identify so I didnt even try.

Myrosmodes

Add this to the number of times orchids have blown my mind! I usually keep my eyes peeled for them on any hike but I was surely not expecting to find them at 15000ft on the side of a mountain I was climbing! These Myrosmodes are the most extreme example of this adaptable family I have ever encountered. Growing where the intense sun quickly burns exposed skin, yet the bitingly cold wind robs all warmth from a resting hiker, these plants like most others that are able to grow here lie low and even recess themselves into the ground if they are able. Effectively out of the wind, the leaves are able to become quite warm in the day, however, camping nearby revealed that the temperatures sink below freezing at night. This means that these plants grow with a 30-40 degree F difference between day and night.

I googled the genus name and found a botanical drawing that showed the the vast majority of the plant is underground. The rosette seen in the photos is the tips of the leaves which sink another few inches into the soil. Their proportionally massive spikes(although it is only a couple of inches tall) illustrate the true size of the orchid. The one to the left shows a spent spike which has forced its way up through the layer of cushin plants as well as the tiny recessed leaf-crown. There were perhaps two species because I also found plants with much longer, thinner spikes, but it could be environmental conditions that cause that change.

A walk through the paramo: Aa

A cold, grassy hillside, 13000ft in the Andes is not the environment one would normally conjure-up when thinking about orchids, but then again the orchids you find there don’t exactly scream “ORCHID!” when you see them either. In fact if you don’t know what you are looking for you might not even see them at all, because they lack the flamboyant beauty, which has made the rest of the family famous. Also, like the other plants in the paramo, they have adapted to life in a harsh zone, which has driven them to throw everything they don’t need to

survive overboard. This one is from the genus Aa, which was named this because a botanist named Reichenbach wanted them to be the first name in botanical literature, and since I guess Aa is technically “Latinized,” the name flew.

The leaves of the plant seasonally die back to their tubers in the ground (side note: these little round tubers found on some terrestrial orchids are what brings orchids to have their name, as “orchis” means testicles in Greek). Their leaves lie almost flat to the ground, while their inflorescences (“spikes” to orchid enthusiasts) hole their little white flowers about a foot off the ground. This keeps them well below the grasses and therefore fairly out of sight (-1), but also keeps them out of the wind (+1). The minute flowers are oriented with the lip up (where it is downward on most orchids) and it forms a little cave-like chamber. The mouth of the chamber is lined with hairs, which leads me to hypothesize that an insect enters the cave, inside which are the sexual organs of the flower, and the hairs discourage it from leaving. That being said, no one knows what pollinates them as far as I know.

LETS WALK THROUGH THE PARAMO

The high Andes ecosystem known as the paramo does not, at first, appear to be a particularly diverse habitat, but if you spend some time walking you might encounter all manner of interesting things. I keep one eye on the ground for the strange shapes that the environment has forced the plants to take, and one eye searches for birds, just as unique. The most famous of these birds is surely the Andean condor, and as you can see we got about as good of a look as

you can hope to get of wild birds. Unfortunately, in my travels my camera has been banged a few times and taken at least two dips (both along with myself). In short, it’s not quick as it used to be and has some trouble getting good shots of birds, so it’s a plant camera now.

The paramo as I see it, has a couple of different faces. There are a couple species of tree and large bushes, which creep up out of the cloud forest and create a thick mossy pygmy forest. In the flats of the valley floors water collects and is covered by a thick boggy layer of cushion plants which sink and bubble when stepped on. The drier Valley walls seem to be dominated by grasses but in fact are populated by all manner of low lying-plants. The grasses are simply the tallest and therefore are all you can see from a distance. As you climb the ground starts to become rockier and plants become more and more sparse, they thin out until only the toughest plants remain.

Because I have so much to say and investigate about the paramo, I will have to divide this up into a series of entries. Also because this type of habitat is not limited to the Andes but found in any mountainous region, I will have to keep up with my discoveries as I get chances to explore the mountains in the US and wherever else I have the opportunity to travel.