Pingo de Ouro

The tour I did yesterday was with a Swiss couple, John and his wife, who have been driving their camper truck throughout South America for the last three years. As they described it, they have no time schedule for visiting any one place. As a matter of fact, they don't use the words "visit" or "tour". They simply live wherever they are until they feel it's time to move on to another location. I picked them up at the Bombeiros (Fire Department), where their truck is in very good company. We spent the morning at Bosque Santa Lúcia and I presented my humble introduction to Amazonian flora. In reality it was a learning experience for me too because the couple shared their experiences in other forests they have visited on their long trip. John's favorite color is yellow. Fortuitously, many yellow blooming trees are now flowering at the Bosque. One is Pingo de Ouro (Acacia sp) shown in the attached image.

Cacau da mata

The translation for this title is wild cacao, or cacao of the forest. What you see in the attached image are the flowers of the tree, which are cauliforous. This variety of cacao is also called monkey's cacao because the monkeys normally get to it first. It's always a surprise to find one of these trees in bloom, as we did today. The flowers begin at the bottom of the trunk and go almost to the top, a spectacular show of color. I was with a Swiss couple, who also enjoyed the highlights.

Açaí palm, a new variety

While at the home of Zacharias Oliveira a few days ago, I was surprised to learn of a new variety of açaí palm (Euterpe sp), one that produces fruit at a height of about two meters. The EMBRAPA scientists developed this one with the objective of facilitating harvest of the açaí fruit, which normally requires a a person akin to a trapeze artist to climb up the 20-30 meters palm to cut the stalk. In the attached image you can see the newly forming açaí berries on panicles, which are easily reached by anyone standing on the ground. As far as I know, these palms are still in a experimental phase.

Calabash tree

I discovered this calabash tree (Crescentia cujete) in the front yard of Zacharias Oliveira, a friend here in Santarém. These trees are fairly common, but it was the size of the tree that caught my attention. The trunk and main limbs are just huge. This is another one of those trees classified as cauliflorous, meaning that the fruit develop directly from the main trunk and limbs of the tree. Except for a mass of seeds, there's nothing inside the huge ball-like fruit, called cuia locally. After drying out, they are normally cut in half and serve as containers for everything under the sun. Decorated cuias are sold in the arts and crafts stores of Santarém.

Muiracatiara tree

In the previous post I showed muiracatiara wood but I forgot to mention that it has an English name too,"tiger wood". Since we don't have tigers in the Amazon, obviously the Indians didn't think of that one. The "painted wood" seems more appropriate! In the attached image you can see what the tree looks like, at least when it's still quite young. I took this picture two years ago. The tree has grown a lot since that time but it still has that "bushy" look to it. In the forest it would probably be growing straight up because of the competition with other trees. I planted nearly 200 muiracatiara trees along the dirt road going into the Bosque but unfortunately most of them were cut down when the power line was put in earlier this year. The right approach would have been to plant the seedlings further back from the road but the area is already in trees. For every tree I plant, I need to cut several others to make allowance for the light factor. As a matter of fact, I've planted hundreds of trees along the Bosque trails, but few have survived because of the shade from the older trees.

Muiracatiara wood

Áurea brought this classy vehicle back from Belém on one of her recent trips there. It's made of muiracatiara wood (Astronium sp), which is very popular for furniture making throughout the Amazon. Muiracatiara is an indigenous word meaning the "painted wood". As you can see from the model car and the piece of wood under it, the wood is well named. Nearly every piece of muiracatiara presents a different scene. Over time it becomes darker in color, thus losing its natural designs.

Ipê, Part II

It's a breath taking event to look at one of these ipê trees in bloom. I compare it to looking at an orchid flower! It's so beautiful, you just can't stop looking at it. I'm only sorry that I didn't take my pictures a few hours earlier when the tree had a full load of blooms. You can see in the image that some of the flowers have fallen from the upper branches. New leaves form almost immediately thereafter. This ipê tree is located on the Municipality Hospital grounds here in Santarém. Given the size of the tree, I assume that it must be the yellow-blooming ipê of the high forest, Tabebuia serratifolia.

Ipê tree

An explosion of yellow blasted my eyes as I drove down Rio Branco Street past the Municipality Hospital yesterday morning. I wasn't able to get back to the location to take pictures the ipê tree until mid-afternoon and by that time the ground was a carpet of yellow flowers. I had missed the peak of flowering by only a few hours. Nevertheless, the tree was still a show of beauty.

Ficus benjamina, Part II

When I took the pictures of these fig trees on Sunday morning, I had to do some maneuvering to get shots without including an array of paraphernalia belonging to the street vendors and car washers, all stashed up in the trees. There were tables, stools, buckets and boxes, all of which would normally be in use down below, except it was Sunday. People earning their living in the streets; all of them survivors making the best out of what nature offers. Included in the tree decorations was this sign, which states, "Please, don't put up banners". A riot!

Ficus Benjamina

Travelers who visit the Nossa Senhora de Conceição Cathedral in Santarém are always impressed with the very distinguished trees on the other side of the street. They, no more than a dozen of them, have that look of being very old and something you might expect to find on the banks of the Amazon River. I could never find anyone who knew the name of trees, so likewise, I could never answer the inevitable question from clients, "What kind of a tree is that?" I didn't stay awake at night pondering the issue, but from time to time I would ask locals about the trees. One day someone told me that they were Benjaminas. Darn it! I should have figured that out long ago. They are fig trees, Ficus benjamina, which is an exotic from somewhere in Asia. As described in a blog post last month, the tree is a favorite for planting on the streets of Manaus and Santarém because it provides lots of shade and it's a "clean" tree, meaning that it doesn't shed its leaves profusely like most of the other species. It also has dense foliage, which makes it a natural for pruning into artistic shapes. Now there are lots of these fig trees around Santarém but I never saw them equal to the ones in front of the cathedral. I can only assume that these are much older.

Amazon and Tapajós Rivers

I'm not running out of blog material at Bosque Santa Lúcia, but I decided to add three more labels to my Tropical Biodiversity theme, those of Amazon River, Tapajós River and Santarém. No justification needed, since visitors will have contact with all three long before making arrangements for a visit to the Bosque. They all fit "hand in glove", so to speak. I'll intermix all labels as I publish posts. A mere click on the label of choice will bring all the publications on that particular topic together for fast reference. I'm also hopeful that these additional labels will bring more readers to my blog. I'm thankful that I have a few faithful readers but I have to confess that not many people have "discovered" Tropical Biodiversity. There are millions and millions of blogs on the records today and I dare say that most of us can't find our own blogs without the complete link addresses. Image: A world of water as two of the largest rivers in the world come together right in front of Santarém. In the background is the Amazon River flowing into the Tapajós, which borders the Santarém waterfront. I took this picture in July of this year from the hillside park called Praça Mirante.

Bug on bird droppings

I discovered this insect on a leaf that was partially covered by what appears to be bird droppings. What got my attention was the fact that it was presumably eating this material. It took a lot of work because the droppings were totally dried up from the summer sun and dust. The insect wasn't at all bothered with me taking pictures. It seemed to be scratching the feces off with what I thought was one of its front legs. As I watched it more closely, I came to the conclusion that it was probably the proboscis, assuming it has one. Notice the large hole in the leaf. I wonder if our friend was responsible for that deed? Maybe not because from what I could see, it was only scrapping off the droppings. If you want a better look, click on the image.

Kinkajou (Potos flavus)

I'm told that is is a kinkajou (Potos flavus) skull. I've never seen a kinkajou in my life, so I can't guarantee it. My doubt is based on the teeth. I can't imagine an nocturnal animal that lives in the trees eating fruit and insects needing all those long sharp teeth. They have prehensile tails, like many monkeys. You might get the impression from looking at the skull that the animal is quite large, but it only weighs between 2-3 kilos. I don't remember how I came by the skull, but I think it was acquired at some Indian village in Peru. I ran into an interesting article on kinkajous at the following link: http://blue-n-gold.com/halfdan/osito.htm

I guess I'll have to eat hat because the author of the reference states that kinkajous are classified as carnivorous and that they do have very sharp teeth!

Unexpected rain

You may have perceived from reading recent posts that October is normally a hot and very dusty month here in the Tapajós River region. November can be the same, so we bite the bullet and try to go about life as though we live in a rain forest environment. Sometimes we are surprised by an unexpected rain! And that's what happened today. At exactly 05:00, I heard distant thunder and a light drizzle of rain began to fall. I hoped for the best, meaning that I thought we might get enough rain to wash off the dust from my palm trees at the Bosque. At 06:00, time to get up to fix breakfast. Still raining at that drizzle pace and I'm fantasizing that some of that water might actually soak into the soil. Come 10:00, the drizzle becomes a real rain; not a downpour, but a heavier rain. Midday it returns to being a drizzle again and then the sky cleared up a bit and the rain stopped. At 20:00, my wife asked me to close all the windows ... and " don't turn on the fan." She's cold! The streets of Santarém are empty. Everybody is cold! Will it rain again tonight? I sure hope so because we got a lot of summer coming up.
Image: Rainy weather over the Tapajós and Amazon Rivers on October 5, 2007

E. Steel, Part IV (American Confederates)

As promised, let me share some of the information on Eliésio Steel's job application, which I discovered just by chance this week when cleaning out a file cabinet containing old outdated receipts and company documents. I'll include only basic data that will hopefully add some historical records to the saga of the approximately one-hundred American Confederate families who immigrated to Santarém in 1867. The application is obviously in Portuguese, the language of Brazil. The translation is mine.

Name: Eliésio Steel do Nascimento
Address: Trav. Portugal, 1.200 - Diamantino - Santarém 68020-150, PA
Date of birth: August 11, 1954
Place of birth: Santarém
Nationality: Brazilian
Marital status: Single
Profession: Professor of English
Name of father: Antenor Luis do Nascimento
Name of mother: Neusa Navarro Steel
High school: Colégio Estadual Prof. Álvaro Adolfo da Silveira - Santarém, 1972-1976
Higher education: Instituto Estadual de Educacão "Carmela Dutra" - Porto Velho, Rondônia; degree in education.
Additional courses: English at Instituto de Idiomas "Yázigi S.C." - Porto Velho
Employment: Professor of English for the State of Rondônia/Department of Education, 1985-1987. Municipality of Porto Velho, Rondônia, Department of Education; professor of English, 1984-1987.

The document was signed by E. Steel here in Santarem on October 23, 1995.

Image: A solid rock vase, created by E. Steel. In use at Bosque Santa Lúcia.

E. Steel, Part III (American Confederates)

In the latter part of June of this year I reported the death of Eliésio Steel do Nascimento, descendant of George Steel, one of first American Confederates to arrive in Santarém in 1867. In the previous two blog posts, I referred to him as E. Steel because I didn't know how to spell his first name. Besides, I had never called him anything other than Steel over the years. I need not repeat what I wrote earlier, other than to say that we didn't get together very often until recent times when he got into the business of selling plants and vases. He would stop by our house occasionally and we would chat in English and, when I could afford it, I'd buy plants and vases from him. The plant arrangement in the attached image was one of his creations. Steel was actually pedaling it around the streets of Santarem on the back of his bicycle the day I bought it. Since his suicide on June 24, 2007, I felt it important that some record be made of this man, his family, his life and the historical link with the American Confederates. Unfortunately, time slipped away without my doing the research. I did encounter his sister, Edilce, once on the street where we live and we promised one another that we would get together in the near future. Then by chance, I met her sister, who now lives in Venezuela. I also had a call from Adilce's brother, who lives in Manaus; he thanked me for my friendship with Eliésio and for the blog posts I had written about his brother. But these were all fast encounters without opportunities to ask the important questions, like how do you spell Steel's first name? I was beginning to think that some of this history would slip into darkness when I came by Eliésio's job application among some old papers in a metal file cabinet that I was cleaning earlier this week. I couldn't believe my eyes. There was his application typed out on some fading bureaucratic-type paper, signed by him personally with both his signature and initials. I nearly threw it into the trash along with outdated receipts and other documents I no longer needed. I honestly don't remember his giving me this document. The fact that he spoke fluent English was good enough reason to apply for a job at a tour agency. Next post: the contents of the application.

Red-brocket deer (Mazama americana)

There was a time when red-brocket deer were more common around these parts, but like all fauna, they've taken a dive in population. As man moves in, fauna moves out, or disappears completely. Around the Bosque Santa Lucia region, this decline has come about in part because of over-hunting and in part because of the changing environment from slash and burn farming to mechanized agriculture that favors mono-cultures, in this case, soy and rice.

The red-brocket deer is adapted physically to survive the jungle environment. They are quite small, about knee-high, as I remember them, and the horns are simplified in that there are only two and they slant back making it easier to get through brush. A big rack of horns wouldn't make it in the forest of the Amazon.

This skull was given to me by a local taxi driver in Santarem, who visited the Bosque three years ago with two American musicians. He told me that this animal was from the Trombetas River area, northwest of here.

Parapará seed pods

This week we strolled over to the Industrial Arts Fair, which takes place every year at Praça São Sebastiao. As you would expect, there's not a lot of industry in a place so far removed from the rest of Brazil. The Fair is made up of maybe a dozen stands, most of them dealing in furniture made from Amazonian woods. The pieces on display are absolutely beautiful and the prices are right. One stand got my attention more than any other, the one selling arts and crafts made of seeds, flowers and other forest products. There are a number of artists in Santarém dealing in this trade, but the lady at this stand seems to have a special talent for making things look very classy. The item in the attached image may be a jewelery box, or some container for whatever purpose. It's made of wood from palm tree branches and decorated with the seed pods of the parapará tree (Jacaranda copaia). On top of these pods you can see a red tento seed (Ormosia sp). The rope to the left is probably made of the fiber of a bromeliad, one called Curuá (Ananas lucidus).

Jaguar skull

I'm not in the business of collecting animal skulls but from time to time friends and colleagues pass them on to me. Maybe they're cleaning out their closets at home; and then too, they know that these artifacts fit in with the theme of flora and fauna at Bosque Santa Lucia. The skull in the attached image is that of a young jaguar. It was given to me by a fellow guide on the Negro River, north of Manaus. I didn't ask too many questions, but my guess is that it was killed for food. I know that happens in this region because I've heard it from the "horse's mouth", the hunters and those who have eaten them. I understand that there are still many jaguars in the primary forest of the Amazon. Unfortunately, they've become very rare around the Santarem region. There was a time when I heard of neighbors at the Bosque commenting on visiting jaguars in suit of their livestock. Now it's been a while since anyone has seen one, as far as I know.

Dust, Part IV

The entrance to Bosque Santa Lúcia is just up ahead to the right and dust is thick on the sides of the road. Notice the Brazil nut tree (Bertholetia excelsa) in the background with a new set of clothes. This is the same tree I showed only a few days ago without one leaf on it. In the foreground are three or four Taperebá (Spondias lutea) trees, all leafless. They will continue naked for a long period of time, probably until we get a good rain. It's interesting how some species put their new clothes on very quickly and others delay in doing so.