Galapagos Tomato? -- Not

One of the plants I most hoped to see in the Galapagos was the endemic tomato, Solanum cheesmaniae.  I'd looked up some information on it before I left, so I knew I was looking for a sprawling plant with tiny berry-like fruits.  Day one through three went by without a sighting of anything remotely tomatoey, but then on day four, in a vacant lot in the little town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, it seemed that my quest might be over.

What I saw was a profusion of sprawling vines covered with bright red berry-sized tomatoes.  I immediately picked a handful and put one in my mouth -- yep, that was definitely a tomato!  Not bad tasting, either. 

As soon as I got home, I logged on to the computer to do some more research on Solanum cheesmaniae.  My first clue that something wasn't right was a picture of the Galapagos tomato with tiny yellowish to orangey fruits.  Then, a reference to research into using S. cheesmaniae in a breeding program to develop a super high-carotene tomato variety.  (Carotene is what gives carrots their orange color.)  Finally, I read that Galapagos tomatoes are insipid and tasteless.

A little further digging, and I realized that what I'd seen in Puerto Ayora was actually an invasive species, S. pimpernellifolium, which many botanists regard as a serious threat to the survival of the endemic Galapagos species.  Solanum pimpernellifolium is commonly called "Currant Tomato", and it's readily available in seed catalogs, particularly those that specialize in heirlooms or other unusual varieties.  The tomatoes it produces are tiny, but reported to have a good tomato flavor.

Although its presence in the Galapagos is bad news because of the possibility of interbreeding with its rare endemic cousins, the currant tomato is a part of the native flora of mainland Ecuador.  I've decided to try growing it in my garden this year!

Meanwhile, here's a link to a picture of the real Galapagos tomato.  I'll just have to wait until our next trip to see it growing wild.  galapagos-tomato/solanum-cheesmaniae/

 

Fuzzy-butts

Here's the critter... 

See why I called it a fuzzy-butt?   It was well after dark when we arrived at the Bella Vista lodge deep in the Andean cloud forest, and after a late supper most of our group headed off to bed.  Tom and I on the other hand were entranced by the amazing diversity of moths and beetles attracted to the lights along the paths.  At first I took these large fluffy-tailed insects to be a type of moth, but I began to have doubts when one landed on me and I realized its wings were rather hard and un-moth-like.  The clincher came when I examined the underside and saw that it had distinctly beak-like mouthparts.
 

 Could it be a true bug?  It sure didn't look like any bug I'd ever seen!  Finally my entomology training began to come back to me, and I remembered that the tropics have some strange groups of Homopterans that aren't commonly found in North America.  Sure enough, when I had the chance to do a little research, I discovered that our Fuzzy-butt is a kind of Fulgorid planthopper -- a member of the group that includes the peanut bug and lanternflies.  The family Fulgoridae is well-represented in the tropics, and contains some really spectacular large plant-sucking bugs, many of which have gigantic strangely-shaped projections on their heads.  An erroneous early report held that the projection of one species was a light-producing organ, hence the name "lanternfly."

The Trip

I figure I'd better start with an overview of our recent Ecuador-plus-Galapagos trip. As I get around to it, I'll write more detailed blog entries on various places we went and things we saw. Our college student travel companions had to turn in journals and photographs as part of their grade -- I think of this blog as a kind of after-the-fact journal for Tom and me.

First of all, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to our friend Dr. Douglas Rayner for inviting us to go! Doug is a professor in the Biology Department of Wofford College in Spartanburg, and this was an interim course he taught for twelve lucky students. Doug and Sociology Prof Dr. Gerald Thurmond led the trip, and Tom and I were fortunate enough to be the extra adults who went along to fill out the group.

We spent our first week high in the Andes of Ecuador after arriving in Quito on the evening of January 13, 2010. Our itinerary crammed an amazing number of activities into a small stretch of time! The adventure began on the 14th when we boarded our bus with guide Santiago and driver Ivan, and headed for the town of Otavalo. Even the bathroom pit-stops were exciting, as the stunning scenery of picturesque towns and farmland, and volcano after volcano unfolded around us. In the next few days, we shopped for handicrafts at the Otavalo market, spent an afternoon and night with an indigenous family, rode horses to a village in the hills, and spent a day and a half exploring the pristine cloud forest on the wet western slope of the Andes. After getting thoroughly sore from hiking up and down the steep slopes, we crossed over the valley to the eastern range and soaked our tired limbs in the hotsprings of the cushy resort at Papallacta. Then came a beautiful drive south through the Avenue of the Volcanoes to our next resting place at La Cienega, a 400 year old Hacienda-turned-hotel. From La Cienega it was a short drive to the amazing Parque Nacional Cotopaxi, where we hiked around glacial Laguna de Limpiopungo, and then climbed to the Cotopaxi base camp at 15,000 ft. Our last day in Quito was a free day, and Tom and I used it to visit our old friend Leonardo at his beautiful family farm just outside the town of Pifo.



The next chapter of our trip took us to the Galapagos Islands where we experienced the dream-come-true of any naturalist, an eight-day cruise on our own chartered boat, the Amigo I. We snorkeled almost every day, and visited the islands of Bartolome, Santiago, Sombrero Chino, Santa Cruz, Floreana, Espanola, San Cristobal, and Seymour North. After a morning flight back from the airport in Baltra, we spent our last afternoon in Ecuador visiting the old historic district of Quito before our mid-night flight back home to Charlotte. It was an amazing journey!

Salps

Salps... that's what they are. Pelagic colonial tunicates. Ever since our first snorkeling session in the Galapagos, I'd been trying to remember the name of these weird creatures and what they are related to. It was the first thing I looked up when I finally got home & reconnected with the internet.

This is a picture I downloaded from a website (see www.itsnature.org), but they're very similar to the salps we saw around the Galapagos. These strange links of jellyfish-like animals were floating in the water just about everywhere we snorkeled, and washed up on some of the beaches as well. I knew they were some kind of colonial animal, and had a vague memory that I'd recently read about them, but I couldn't quite recall the details. Turns out they're plankton feeders that are found in oceans all over the world, but are especially common in the Southern Ocean (around Antarctica.)

Oddly enough, when I saw the name "salp" I immediately remembered why I'd googled it before the Galapagos trip. I have an addictive word game on my ipod, and when the word "salp" kept turning up on it, I thought "What the heck is a salp?" so I looked it up. Who knew I would soon actually be seeing them!