Pinguicula sp. in Desfiladero de los Beyos

It seems that I'm going to find Pinguicula every summer. I spent a week in Ribota with some friends, a tiny village in a valley in Picos de Europa. We did some hiking around, including the Horcados Rojos peak and Torre Bermeja (unfortunately I could not reach the summit) and went a couple of days to the beach. The road from the village to the north goes through a very narrow canyon, the Desfiladero de los Beyos, which has been formed by the Sella river. This canyon is full of rock walls, where I found some Pinguiculae. Once more shouting "STOP THE CAR!" did work, without accidents, and I could take some pictures.

I cannot confirm the species, since the plants had already flowered and the seed pods were ripe. However, they seem Pinguicula vulgaris. I also found some Pinguicula in the Cereceda valley, but did not take any pic.

Once more I have to thank J.S.F. (Hall of Fame member), M.P.O. and R.N.G. for their patience, for stopping the car in the middle of the road and for their cameras. Although they have helped me in similar situations. They still aren't carnivorous plants fans :-(

Enjoy the pics!

Group of plants with some captures.

Detail of leaf showing capture and sticky droplets.

General view of a colony. Pinguicula and some ferns grow on nearly bare rock. Plants were only present in wet rocks, with a constant water flow. Many of them grow in a hard muddy crust over the rock wall.

Plant with some small insects and debris.

A pair of plans with some juvenile plantlets in the lower left part of the picture.

Summer 2010

Today I saw that at least three traps of my Dionaea had opened and had digested weevils in them. This year, weevils have eaten many Sarracenia leaves, specially from my S. alata. As you may imagine, having your Sarracenia leaves eaten as they grow is not a pleasant experience, and even more this year that my S. alata has beaten its height record: 77.5 cm.

So it was a great joy to see that little revenge from the other plants (some days ago I saw that my S. purpurea had another drown weevil in it). By the way, placing my Droserae capensis around the Sarraceniae had no effects. Weedles don't stick.

Below is a pic of one of the dead weevil, and other pics I made. Enjoy!

Dead weevil. Yes!

Drosera tokaiensis colony. Grown from seed.

Detail of Sarracenia alata pitcher, showing nectar drops.

One of my new favorites (but one of my worst pics): Drosera intermedia

More D. muscipula prey: a slug (half of it hanging out of the trap, dry like a stick, ugh!) and, on the top, a bug that tried to escape cutting a hole (but didn't make it)

Sarracenia oreophila 'DeKalb county', with old pitchers.

Dionaea muscipula 'Dentata', showing its distinctive "theeth"

Anthos

Proyecto Anthos is a website hosted by the Royal Spanish Botanical Garden that has a comprehensive database of Spanish flora. It provides taxonomic information, common names, references, conservation info, pictures, botanical drawings and has a very easy to use and powerful search tool. The site is both in English and Spanish.

The tool I that find most useful is the Geographical Search. It allows you to find in a map (based on Google Maps, and enriched with more information layers) specific locations where a species has been reported to grow. This helps while organizing field trips and also provides information when trying to verify the species of a plant that one has found in a specific location.

As an example, you can see in the following screen capture the location of Pinguicula mundi in Spain (click to enlarge).

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