Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

In this zone the cultivation of coffee replaces that of cacao in the zone below. I have never seen larger or finer berries anywhere than we found on the shrubs grown on the eastern declivity of the Cordilleras near San Miguel. And yet, strange to relate, only a short distance from this spot, we found it impossible to get a cup of coffee, although we asked for it at several places. There was chocolate and chicha in abundance, but no coffee, where it would be, one would think, the most common beverage. Its absence here reminded us of the difficulty we found in getting a calabash of milk on the great cattle farms of the llanos.

At twelve hundred meters above sea level the palm family begins to lose its importance, although graceful representatives continue to charm the traveler until he reaches much higher altitudes. But one is, in a measure, reconciled to the disappearance of palms, that so delighted one in the lowlands, by the marvelous display made on all sides by countless species of the convolvulus and gesnerwort families. Nothing can exceed their exuberance, or their gay and brilliant flowers, as they mantle the shrubbery by the wayside or peep out from under the forest trees along one’s path.

The flora comprehended in the zone extending from eighteen to twenty-four hundred meters above the sea is in reality transitional in its nature, and partakes of the character of both that of the tierra templada and the tierra fría. The various species of cinchona render this zone notable, for it is here and in the tierra fría that was formerly obtained most of the quinine of commerce.

Tierra fría extends from twenty-four hundred to three thousand meters above sea level. Its vegetation, as would be expected, is entirely different from that of the hot plains and temperate valleys of the lowlands. One no longer sees the elegant forms of the plantain and the bamboo, nor the majestic palm and ceiba, nor the graceful and flexible bejucos and creepers of hotter climes. But, notwithstanding the absence of all these charming representatives of Flora, it cannot be said of the vegetation of tierra fría that it is either poor or devoid of importance. Its dark hardy foliage, may, if you will, give it the impress of solemnity and melancholy, but the herbs, shrubs and trees are remarkable, not only for the number of their species, but also for the beauty of their inflorescence and the variety and importance of their products. Here flourish the noble red cedar and the white caoutchouc tree that supplies to commerce the highly valued rubber known as the Virgen del Para.

The products of our northern lands, such as wheat, barley and potatoes, and such fruits—all of foreign origin—as the peach, pear, cherry and apple, together with a number of valuable garden vegetables, are cultivated in this zone, and with marked success.

The most important, and in some respects the most remarkable plant of the tropics is Indian corn—zea mais. It is cultivated in all the zones from the hot plains of tierra caliente to the upper regions of tierra fría and constitutes, in one form or another, the chief food-supply of the inhabitants. There is, however, a striking difference in the time required for the plant to reach maturity at the different altitudes. In the hot climates it is often ready for the harvest in two months after planting—when several crops a year are obtainable—whereas in the cold uplands it requires nearly a year to mature.

All the land between the tierra fría and the region of perpetual snow is called the paramo. It corresponds to the puna of Peru, Bolivia and Northern Chili. In some parts of Colombia the paramos are bleak, treeless plains, often enveloped in dark, cold fogs, or swept by keen blasts of almost arctic severity. In other parts, they are covered by a hardy Alpine vegetation, together with grasses and mosses of different species. The most interesting growths are strange-looking ferns and the woolly Frailejon—Espeletia grandiflora—which Sievers well designates as the character-plant of the paramos. The name, Frailejon, signifies a big monk, and was given the plant by the inhabitants on account of the fancied resemblance of its felt-like covering to a monk’s hood. It is usually from six to eight feet high, but it frequently attains a much greater altitude. It is one of those odd forms of vegetation that once seen are never forgotten.

No mere account, however, of the wonderful changes witnessed in passing from lower to higher altitudes can give any idea of the effect produced on the traveler. Every hour—yea, every minute—on his upward journey, he is greeted by new forms of vegetable life and must needs at the same time bid farewell to others that may not accompany him beyond their own proper zones. But, although Flora’s children are ever changing, they are always beautiful and it would be difficult for the botanist to say where they challenge the most admiration—in the hot plains of the Orinoco and the Meta or high up on the cheerless and inhospitable paramo.

What we found most astonishing in our three-days journey from the llanos to the crest of the Cordilleras was the extraordinary number and diversity of forms of plant life. While we, in our northern woodlands, do well if we can find a score of different species of trees in the space of a square mile, we may, within the same limits in a tropical forest, count species by the hundred. Every few rods, on our way from Villavicencio to the cumbre of the Andes, we noted the appearance of some new species of plant, shrub or tree; some strange vine or epiphyte; some fruit or blossom which we had not observed before.

Great as were the physical and meteorological changes observable between the tierra caliente and the paramo, those of the vegetable world were still greater. At times, during our rapid ascent from lower to higher altitudes, from llanos to paramo, the changes in species were so rapid and kaleidoscopic, the transitions so sudden and unexpected, that our brains were in a whirl and we had to give up in despair the attempt to keep anything approaching a record of the order of sequence of the countless vegetable forms encountered along our path. Considering solely the successive changes in flora and temperature, our experience in climbing the Cordilleras was like that which would result from a three-days journey overland from the sultry valley of the Amazon to the gold-bearing strands of the Yukon or to the distant shores of the Arctic Ocean.