Cord. del Condor – Rio Numbaime & El Zarza
We drove north of Zamora to the town of Los Encuentros, then across the Rio Zamora and into the Cord. del Condor area to the east. Marco had told me he found his original ‘Marco’s Pride’ plant along the Rio Numbaime and I wanted to see it in habitat and see what else might be there. Most of this area is at low elevation 800-900 meters but the tepui of the cordillero could be seen in the distance. A trail follows the Rio Numbaime up to a waterfall.
We did not see ‘Marco’s Pride’ there, but along this trail we saw several plants of Costus amazonicus and another plant that looked like it could be Costus zamoranus. The former was terminal flowering and had the characteristic fibrous margins to the bracts. The latter was a basal flowering plant that had the same kind of “detrius” covering as the plants we had seen in Nangaritza.
From there we took a different road to higher elevations and found more Costus amazonicus and the pubescent form of Costus laevis, similar to what we had found in the Podocarpus area. One plant found at 1300 meters appeared to be a natural hybrid of the two – a plant we were calling Costus ‘Reina Rosada’.
Tags: Costus 'Reina Rosada', Costus amazonicus, Costus zamoranus