Travel Report to MBG

老師說: 採集回來了, 交一篇旅遊見聞的報告上來吧!
於是, 寫了下面的文章, 充充植物園內部刊物的版面......

Late last November, my wife and I traveled to Argentina, Tierra del Fuego, and the Falkland Islands for a month to collect populations of Oreomyrrhis.

In the planning phase, Dr. Fernando Zuloaga (SI) provided us with ample helps from trip arranging to visa application.
Before heading south, we spent a few days checking collections in SI and LP and sightseeing in Buenos Aires.
We also had a 2-day side trip to Cordoba (8-hour overnight bus from BA) to collect populations of Oreomyrrhis in the Sierra Grande, with the help of Dr. Marcelo Cabido, an ecology professor and Cordoba flora expert of Universida Nacional de Coordoba. In one day, Dr. Cabido's expertise in the natural history of the area led us to many different vegetation types of the region and collected three different populations of Oreomyrrhis andicola.

In Argentine Tierra del Fuego, we were hosted by the legendary Natalie Goodall. Natalie's neat plant line drawings were featured in the Flora of Tierra del Fuego and her extensive collections of the Fuegian flora in 60's and 70's provided us the most reliable clues for us to look for Oreomyrrhis. Actually, most of our efforts to locate Oreomyrrhis in places that Natalie never collected Oreomyrrhis 30 years ago failed.
We spent many interesting nights in the Museo Acatushun with summer volunteer students, who help to clean bones of marine mammals and birds collected allover TDF and provide guide tour of the museum for visitors. Surrounded by glaciated mountain and the clean, calm water in the Beagle Channel, the museum is located at the entrance of the settlement of Goodall family's Estancia Harberton and is probably the most beautiful place you can do a volunteer work. The museum was inaugurated in 2001 to house the bone specimens (more than 2,300) collected by Natalie over the years.

To catch up the flight to the Falklands (or Malvinas), we took a 14-hour bus tour from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas (southern Chilean Patagonia). After landing in Falkland international airport, we started our island-hopping tour carried by the 8-passenger planes run by Falkland Island Government Air Service (FIGAS). With a detailed collecting record provided by the Falkland Conservation, we were able to achieve an extremely thorough sampling of Oreomyrrhis hookeri in one week (drove on almost all drivable roads in the W and E Falklands).
Although the Falkland War in 1982 is probably still most people's first impression of this remote archipelago, the abundance and the accessibility of the wildlife, the spacious and diverse landscape, and the easy 19-century sheep farm life style, the warm people here, and the scarcity of tourists really make our collecting trip in the Falkland a dream vacation.
In addition to the success of the fieldwork in FK, in the remote Saunders and Pebble Islands (NW of the Falkland), the face-to-face experience with five different kinds of penguins and the black-brow albatross is just amazing and beyond the words can express.

So, enjoy the pictures!

p.s. Thanks NSF DDIG, MO and Wash U DBBS for supporting my expense of the trip.