NATIVE FLOWERS ECUADOR & NATIONAL FLOWER CHUQUIRAHUA
Native Flowers of Ecuador
In general, the warm humid conditions of the tropical jungle
throughout the year provide optimal
conditions for plants. Consequently, one finds many more species in the
tropics than in the temperate climates. Currently over 400,000 species
of plants and flowers Native of Ecuador have been identified for the tropical jungle of the Amazon and botanists
continue to add new names to the native flowers of Ecuador
list every year.
Biologists found that
the greatest variety in
rainforest tree
species in Ecuador live in the
Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve,
together with Yasuní National Park, which have the richest in plant diversity
in the world. There are several reasons why Cuyabeno and Yasuni are richer in plant
species then Amazon parks in neighboring countries:
Cuyabeno and Yasuní
National Park are still very close to the lower Andes
foothills, and still has species that require the lower-Andes
ecological conditions;
Slow-flowing rivers and the lakes in the
upper-watersheds provide sediment-poor "black-water" ecology favorable for certain
aquatic life-forms while sediment-rich "coffee and milk"
colored waters abound in the Amazon.
Both well-drained hills "tierra firma" ecosystems
and swamp ecosystems are present in the reserves;
Cuyabeno is situated precisely on the Equator
and Yasuní just south of it,
where seasonal fluctuations are relatively mild and where rain even falls
during the "dry season", allowing species to survive that don't
support several months of total drought.
National Flower, the
Chuquirahua
The
Chuquirahua is a shrub in the Asteraceae family of the high Andes paramo
with bright orange flowers. One can admire them at the high paramo of
the Chimborazo Fauna Reserve near Riobamba.
World's Greatest Diversity of Native Flowers
is in Ecuador
In fact, Ecuador
is the world's smallest megadiverse country and has the world's greatest
biodiversity per hectare. This
diversity is the result of
several factors:
It is one of the only 10 continental countries on the
equator, most of which are characterized by wet tropical conditions;
Being on the equator, most rainforests have
relatively little seasonal variety, allowing more species to survive than
in regions with more seasonal fluctuation in precipitation and temperatures;
The Andes divides the country in three zones,
each with different sets of species;
The coastal region of Ecuador is in the
transition from the world's wettest region in the world, the Choco in Colombia
and the southern Andean deserts that start in Peru with countless endemic
species.
Dear visitor, our website gives you info about
our
National Parks Tours,
our
Galapagos programs, the
Cuyabeno Loop,
as well as our
Cuyabeno and Cofan Lodges in the Amazon.
For those who want to combine the
Exuberant Nature of Ecuador with the Famous culture of Peru, we even have a
7
days Highlights of Peru extension! Our website
gives you the best information on the internet, because we are the only tour
operator run by professional biologists. Take a look:
OUR PARKS AND TRIBES ECO TOURS
(Scroll down for the full description of the current page)
STANDARD COFAN LODGE TOUR
Start your Cuyabeno journey on
Ecuador's most scenic wide Amazon tributary, the Aguarico River. Spend 3 nights in the Cofan Lodge,
exploring the lower Cuyabeno and Zábalo Rivers.
The Cuyabeno Loop explores
the breathtaking scenery of lower Cuyabeno and Zábalo
Rivers and the Cuyabeno Lake. Watch the amazing birds and
wildlife. Pass 2 nights with the amazing Cofan Indians in
the Cofan Lodge and enjoy 2 nights of comfort in the famous
Cuyabeno Lodge.
The Lagarto Cocha Expedition on hidden
creeks and lakes is the best Amazon journey in Ecuador!
Discover Indian tribes in Ecuador, Monkeys, Sloths,
Dolphins. No other Amazon rainforest in any of the
Amazon-Andean countries can match the wildlife viewing
of Cuyabeno and it is far better than Yasuní!
The Cuyabeno Lake Program
explores all the wild places surrounding the Cuyabeno Lake.
Bonsai-shaped Macrolobia trees with the whispering of the
mysterious prehistoric Hoatzin birds and the noisy Blue and
Yellow Macaws. Our Cuyabeno Lodge is on the best location,
because we were the first and chose the best location on a
seasonal island in the Cuyabeno Lake itself.
Our Northern Andes Tour lets you get a
taste of some of the best Andean National Parks,
visiting the highest groves in the world: the Polylepis
trees, the highest mountain in the world calculated from
the center of the Earth, the Chimborazo with Vecuñas and
Lamas, the highest active volcano in the world, the
Cotopaxi.
Our National Parks Tours take you on a fantastic
journey along the best possible sample of Andean and coastal
parks. They have been designed to complement
Galapagos and/or Amazon cruises. They can start from different places, particularly Quito,
Guayaquil and Cuenca. While the full program lasts 9 days, it is possible to
make a limited selection of parks, like the 6 days' "Andes
and Coast" module.
We have a fabulous selection of Galapagos
programs, including cruises, island hopping, scuba
diving or relaxing on one of the many different hotels
varying from modest inns to deluxe resorts.
A fabulous program for visiting the most
famous cultural highlights Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu and the
Sacred Valley. At the same time it serves as the Lima hub
for the Peru National Parks Tour. This module is an
extension to our National Parks Tour Ecuador and/or Galapagos National Park
and/or Amazon Cruises.
Of the 2 Amazon mega parks, the
Cuyabeno Nature Reserve
certainly is the
most accessible one and with lots of low, epiphyte clad trees, you will
be able to see many more flowers
in Cuyabeno than in Yasuní.
Being extremely rich in plants and trees, it is very rare that a single plant
or tree can become
so abundant that it dominates the forest. Flowers bloom, one
treasure at the time. Along the coast and in the Andes, the situation is
very different, hower. Usually there are a few or even sometimes one
species that dominate the vegetation.
The sunlight on the forest floor of the Amazon rainforest is so low,
that few plant species can live there. This has resulted in the
evolution of plants that may live high up on trees: Epiphytes. They can
grow on trunks, branches, leaves as well as on top of other Epiphytes.
Each tree is an ecosystem by itself with its own flora and fauna. Take a
look at bromeliads, orchids,
aroids, mosses, ferns and lichens in the Amazon.
In the Andes, and the dry forests
of the coasts, you find very different species as other factors determine their abundance,
likr the humidity in the air.
Epiphytes form complete
micro-ecosystems in the trees.
In the coastal lowlands, Cotacachi Cayapas is the richest
in plant species, being in the Choco humid tropical region, while
getting down to just over 200 masl in its lowest parts.
Other coastal lowland parks may be less diverse in
species, as they are either mangrove parks - mangroves are notoriously
species-poor - or located in zones with less rainfall and during their
pronounced dry seasons, both factors that impact species diversity
negatively.
Bromeliads
With in excess of 2,000 species of Bromeliads,
they're are very prominently present in Ecuador. Sometimes, one can find them growing on the ground, but mostly,
they live on branches as Epiphytes.
The leaves of Bromeliads wrap around their stems thus creating little
spaces where rainwater can accumulate. Sometimes a single plant can hold
several liters of water. In absence o fishes, these tiny little pools provide
safe environments for aquatic species such as amphibians: frogs
along with their tadpoles, salamanders as well as their larvae. Other
creatures include snails, beetles, mosquito larvae, etc. When
those animals die, their bodies decay and function as fertilizers to the
host plants. As Bromeliads come in a number of colors like purple, blue,
orange and red, they're getting increasingly fashionable as ornamentals.
In dry parks, like Machalilla, bromeliads are essential in catching
water from seasonal mists, which they share with their host trees. Naturally you know our favorite Bromeliad, the Pine Apple.
Many Bromeliads
accumulate water at the base of their leaves, which then serve as safe
environments for amphibians.
Trees are
densely covered by epiphytes
Orchids
With as
many as 20,000 species in the Amazon region alone,
Orchids form the most
species rich family in the plant kingdom. In forests they grow mostly as Epiphytes,
occurring in many different shapes and colors, including green. They have
grown to be increasingly successful plants to the horticultural sector
as clients value the longer lives of the flowers, their bright colors
and their exotic shapes. While more abundant in rainforests, the more
spectacular orchids used in horticulture are species from dry tropical
forests.
The colors and shapes of orchids never stop to
fascinate us.
Heliconias
Heliconias have
spectacular multicolored flowers of both wet and seasonal tropical
forests. With their spectacular shapes and colors, heliconias are have becoming
in fashion as ornamental flowers.
With flowersin
bright colors and fascinating shapes, heliconias are gorgeous
plantsof the rainforest of Ecuador.
Other flowers
Tropical flowers
occur in many shapes and colors.
Coniferous trees in South America
There are no native pine trees in South America,
which have their southernmost pine
species in Nicaragua. But there are only a few conifers in South America,
in Ecuador
the Podocarpus trees, in
Podocarpus National Park
as well as a few other parks, and in Argentina and Chile the Monkey Puzzle Tree, Araucaria araucana.
Other
than those, all South American conifers, like the common Pinus
Radiata in the Andes of Ecuador, have been introduced from the
North.
Above: Podocarpus trees in Podocarpus National Park;
Below: Podocarpus oleifolius twigs.
Above: Podocarpus bark ;
Below: Podocarpus oleifolius leaves.
Swamps in Ecuador
For non-native speakers: a marsh is a
wetland with primarily grass, reed and moss vegetation, while a swamp is
a - sometimes temporarily - inundated forest. From the Cotacachi peak at
4939 masl to the Cayapas lowlands just above 200 masl is less than 75 km
and it has at least 10 different ecosystems within the reserve.
On the other hand, from the Andes foothills to the Atlantic
Ocean, the elevation difference is only about 300m over a distance of
about 3000km, in other words an average of 10cm per kilometer. The
variety of ecosystems is limited to just very few, albeit, that the
number of species within each humid tropical lowland ecosystem is
enormous. Also, under
such circumstances flooding is very common and there are many swamp
forests as opposed to the Andes slopes, where swamps and marshes are
limited to presence in the paramos only. in the Amazon lowlands, the swamp forests
consist of Macrolobium forest and seasonally inundated forests in the
Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve and oxbow swamps in Yasuní. Macrolobium trees are covered with countless
epiphytes, which in some cases may reach a layers of up to 1m thick.
Macrolobium trees with flowers and pods.
The
Macrolobium groves are located in the shallow flooded zones of the
Cuyabeno and other lakes, including at Lagarta Coche at the border with Peru. These
bonsai
shaped legume trees stand in water at depth where other trees can't
survive; as mucho as 3m deep during high water levels. On such
locations, they grow no more than 5 - 8 m high. But they also grow in
much regular forests, where they reach up to 30 m high. During the dry
season, when they are flowering they may occasionally stand dry. Their
leaves are the favorite browse for hoatzins, while the sometimes 1 meter
thick carpet of epiphytes for micro-ecosystems in their own right.
Famous worldwide, but extremely rare in their worldwide
occurrence are the Mangrove forests, which are the swamp forests of the Pacific
coast. Other than those, very few marshes and swamps occur in the western
lowlands.
Above: Red Mangrove trees are the most common in Ecuador's
mangrove swamps.
Above: Black mangrove, Avicennia germinans, is an
interesting species which grows countless air roots up into the air for
breathing.
Vines
Vines too, constitute a life form that has
responded to the low light conditions of the forest floor. In stead of
growing at a rather slow pace like epiphytes, vines grow along tree trunks;
without the need to grow solid strong stems or trunks, they can grow much faster to reach the greater light conditions in
the canopies. They hold on to tree trunks with sucker roots, tendrils or
by winding
themselves along their host tree. The word "lianas" refers to thick woody vines of the tropics and a number of them may
grow to a length of several hundreds of meters as they spread across many
tree crowns.
A special vine is the Strangler Fig which is a common name for many
species of vines that completely wrap the trunk of a host tree, which will eventually
end up dying or being being "strangled". As the host tree dies, one will find
that these trees have a hollow central core at the place where the host
trunk used to grow.
Vines.
In the picture on the right you can
see that hardly any plants can grow on the dark rainforest floor
itself. Vines have adapted themselves to use the "fast lanes" of tree
trunks to grow towards the light of the canopy.
Strangler vines
Strangler vines are
transform themselves into trees: As they grow more and more vines and
branches around their host species, the trunks of the latter get totally
covered under a cover of vine trunk. As they grow, they end up
suppressing or "strangling
their host by taking all the nutrients and light. After the host dies, its
trunk decomposes and the strangler vine becomes a tree with a hollow
but healthy core.
Different stages of
strangler vines.
Other impressive
tree forms
Differents tree forms.
Some of the
forest giants are so tall and heavy, that they need buttress roots to support
them, while some of them actually grow in hollow shapes. Much of their weight is
due to thick covers of epiphytes, that can absorb large quantities of water that
weigh down the trees. Other trees live along lake or river shores and have large
numbers of roots growing down from their branches, thus resembling "fresh water
mangroves". With so many different species in the jungle, it is impossible to
name
all plants andnative flowers of Ecuador.
Dry forests
The coastal dry forests are the opposite of the
swamps, characterized by many adaptations, like cacti, leathery and leaves,
deciduousness (leave shedding), dwarf trees and shrubs, etc.
Dry coastal srubland.
Lowland shrubs dominated by cacti.
Paramos
Often considered extremely species rich, the
actually are rather species poor, with a limited number of shrubs, grasses and
often compressed dicots dominating the vegetation. Nevertheless, many of their
species are very conspicuous and beautiful en contribute to the 10,000
native flowers of Ecuador.
Epidendrum Jamieson
is anorchid common in the paramo.
Paramo
Mistletoe Shrub, Psittacanthus sp. is a
parasitic shrub common in them paramo.