The San
Diego County Orchid Society’s Conservation
Committee, one of a few societies in the U.S.
with an aggressive approach to orchid
conservation, has funded a grant for $581 to
purchase books for the Vargas Herbarium of the
University of Cuzco, Peru, and for the personal
library of a most promising young University
student, William Nauray. Nauray is actively
studying the orchids of Wiñay Wayna, an
orchid-rich, cloud-forest portion of the
Historical Sanctuary of Machu Picchu.
The Vargas Herbarium
(CUZ), which is the primary repository of orchid
specimens from southern Peru, contributed
substantially to the Orchids of Peru by Charles
Schweinfurth, written in the late 1950’s and
1960’s. Most of the herbarium was
inventoried and photographed in 1999 by a grant
from the Orchid Research Fund of the Institute of
Systematic Botany of the New York Botanical
Garden. Nauray has a remarkably astute eye for
miniature orchids in the field and has
contributed many new, well-documented
distribution records for Cuzco. Among his
collections are the first Peruvian collections of
Pachyphyllum tortuosum, previously thought to be
a Venezuelan endemic, as well as Stellilabium
pogonostalix and Telipogon venustus. His
collections, which are still under active study
as part of his thesis, include a number of
unidentified collections that are either new to
Peru or, more likely, new to science. Visiting
Nauray in Cuzco represents the very essence of
cutting-edge new discoveries — a truly
exciting, hands-on time. Access to his study set
significantly contributed to the Orchids of Machu
Picchu (in press), the first eco-tourist guide to
the orchids of the Sanctuary published under the
auspices of the Finnish Government. This work
describes more than 250 species of orchids
distributed in some 71 genera and represents the
first orchid florula (treatment of a small flora)
for Peru. My Peruvian colleague,
David Bennett, and myself are quite impressed by
Nauray’s ability to navigate in high
elevation cloud forest, self-motivate to continue
active field work under trying conditions, and
diligently follow-up with meticulous herbarium
and library studies until solid identifications
of his collections can be nailed down. Clearly
Nauray is at the start of what we hope [and
encourage] is a long and productive career.
In addition to books
purchased for Nauray for his research within the
Sanctuary, a ten-year run of the Orchid Digest
has been purchased and deposited in the library
of the Vargas Herbarium, available to anyone
interested in botany and (or) orchids. To our
knowledge this is the first set of this journal
in southern Peru and the first set of this
journal in a public library in Peru. During
recent trips to Peru the author has hand-carried
partial sets of the American Orchid Society
Bulletin and Orchids, donated by arm-twisted
private orchid growers, to Peru. While these
represent a good start, the author quite actively
and unabashedly seeks further donations of orchid
books and journals for libraries/students in
Peru. As I am often quoted, "if you can get
them to Sarasota, I will get them to Peru."
The San Diego County
Orchid Society is to be applauded for their
long-term view, helping to build orchid resources
in tropical Latin America. While the general rule
in conservation is to "think globally and
act locally", I prefer the hard-core
activist approach followed by San Diego to think
globally and simply act globally. Readers of
Orchids, the Orchid Digest, and other popular
journals should eagerly anticipate an onslaught
of articles by a dedicated group of students in
Cuzco including Nauray and his associates Danitza
Moscosa and Norma Salinas.
The San Diego County
Orchid Society actively seeks support for its
conservation work. Anyone interested in donating
orchid-related publications to public
institutions in Peru should contact the author.
Anyone interested in donating money or other
resources directly to San Diego’s
conservation efforts should contact Dr. Peter S.
Tobias, Dept. of Immunology IMM-12, The Scripps
Research Institute, 10550 N. Torrey Pines Rd., La
Jolla, CA 92037 (e-mail: tobias@scripps.edu).