In my regular riding visits (virtually daily it seems) to the altiplano, I sometimes just stop the bike on the side of the highway, heave my weakling body off the bike, and go for a short (very short) walk off into the scenery to have a look about... Just seems like the thing to do :)
When I was first riding through, Id see the sparse alpine vegetation and Id think to myself... Yeah, I really like the feel of this place, but the vegetation is not as nice as it is in the Alpine areas of Tasmania! (my favorite Alpine region). It just seemed that there were fewer species of the real extreme alpine plants thats all.
But now, having got off and wandered around a bit I think I was wrong.
Its just that here in Peru, it seems that the different species dont quite "intermingle" to the same degree, and they all seem to have slightly different climatic preferences.
So, while in Tasmania, you get to see all the different cushion-plants, and sedges and tusock grasses and heather/heath and mosses and lichens all growing in the one little area; Here in Peru, if you just look casually, you tend to see an area where one species dominates and the others are not visible... And as you drive through the next region its a different plant that looks more or less the same, and then another etc.
So, it seems that there is not so much going on... But, its not so. The other species are there but they are much less apparent.
Most of the high country (the largest areas) is covered in either a Tussock grass (seems to be in the drier areas)
Or a Turf grass (that seems to prefer the wetter water course and valley bottom areas) Im pretty sure there are at least two different varieties of each of these.
There are also several types of heather/heath (usually in the rocky outcrops)
But my favourite plants are the "Cushion" plants that form either mounds or flat discs, or even circles. They seem to be the hardiest of the plants and they grow at higher altitude in the driest, most exposed areas (possibly thats why I like them most :) )
In Tasmania, there are I think four species of them, and they really "intermingle" to the point where you get all four of them intermeshed in the one mound.
(archive pic)
Here in Peru, there seem to be at least three species, but while they do grow up against each other, they dont seem to intermingle often at all...
The less common one seems less hardy and grows in mats in more sheltered areas.
The hardiest one of them seems to me to be really more of a moss/lichen (really interesting combination if it is) than a flowering plant (but what do I know)! Its a light grey-green and mostly grows in flat discs of 10-50cm in diameter. When the disc gets bigger than that, the centre seems to die off and you get these grey-green rings of up to 2m wide or so all over the place.
The other main type (also very hardy) is a bright green and tends to grow in mounds, and they can be 10cm to 3m in size. They look like big pillow type structures but when you touch them they are very rough textured and rock hard... You could literally walk on them and not mark them (though I didnt do that of course). These plants are so dense that Im told the local people hack them up with a pick/axe and use tham as fire wood!
Growing next to each other...
And Intermingled...
The interesting thing to me about these plants is that they are in fact shrubs with leaves, twigs, branches, trunks etc... But, the climate is so harsh up here that the plant has evolved so as to expose as little of its self to the elements as possible... It dose this by growing under-ground and just letting the very hardy short needle-like leaves protrude... (So the three metre mound is really a very old "buried" tree) Cool!
I found a piece of one of these on the road (It fell off the cutting at the road side it had been growing on) and you can see that its a whole branch/trunk of a small tree... You cant just take a small cutting of one of these and expect it to grow in a pot. If you do, you will have missed the roots completely... They are way underground!
There are a bunch of other plants that grow up here too but they are all quite small (2-10cm size) and never seem to dominate the landscape.
So, thats what Ive seen so far. As I said, my favourites are the cushion plants and I grow them at home if I could (Amazingly, the micro climate at my house is both hot enough in the summer and cold enough in the winter) but I have no way of getting these types of plants there (nothing like them in North America that I know of).
I think Im gonna see if I can find some seed heads of the plants here when I take my next walk in the alpine... And we will see what happens...
I may also see if I can get seeds from a wild-flower Nursery in Tasmania for the species from there :)....
I dont expect cultivating them will be easy though... I also strongly suspect that they take centuries to grow!!
