352 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



telephone wires as does Tillandsia usneoides and Tillandsia recurvata. 



Having collected bromeliads in Mexico and Cuba, Mrs. Foster and 

 I found irresistible the opportunity to collect them in the jungles of 

 Brazil, home of the greatest number of bromeliad species. Accord- 

 ingly we sailed from New York in the spring of 1939, but when we 

 landed 2 weeks later in Brazil, it was fall below the Equator. 



Wliile waiting for our permit, we took several short collecting trips 

 near Kio with Dr. Bertha Lutz, botanist, who is making an intensive 

 study of the flora in the Distrito Federal. However, her work is not 

 confined to botany, for she is an eager student of zoology with partic- 

 ular interest in frogs and, with her father, the late Dr. Adolpho Lutz, 

 has made outstanding contributions to the knowledge of frogs in 

 Brazil. While collecting with her, we developed a new interest in 

 bromeliads — that of the fauna, particularly the frogs, that live deep in 

 the centers of the water-filled bromeliads. From that time on we 

 found the study of frogs to be an interesting accompaniment to the 

 collecting of bromeliads. 



Our first collecting trip in Brazil was prophetic in that we found 

 our first new species of bromeliads, for we later realized that this set 

 the pattern for our whole Brazilian trip — we were always turning up 

 new species. Our total of over 60 (with more yet to be described) 

 was as much of a surprise to us as to the botanists, especially Dr. 

 Smith, the bromeliad specialist. In the thousands of herbarium sheets 

 from Brazil which he had examined in the past 10 years, only 9 new 

 bromeliads had shown up from that country. While I had hopes of 

 finding a few new species, I did not expect to find very many because 

 this family has been well collected in Brazil, nearly one-third of the 

 known species having been found within its confines. 



Our "safari" numbered two. Our equipment was meager : two suit- 

 cases, two cameras, a herbarium press, and a gasoline stove. The most 

 important factor, however, in our equipment was our limitless enthusi- 

 asm for the fascinating family of Bromeliaceae. 



Searching for bromeliads has taught us many lessons in topography, 

 for Brazil is a land of contrasts. It includes extremes of weather and 

 terrain. During two winters of some 12,000 miles of trekking by 

 water, rail, auto, and on foot, the bromeliads took us into almost every 

 kind of condition that that great country has to offer. One day we 

 were in the rainiest jungle of Brazil, at Alto da Serra south of Rio, 

 which is over 1,500 miles south of the Amazon ; and next we traveled 

 nearly a thousand miles by coastwise steamer, by narrow-gauge rail- 

 way, by ox cart, and on foot, through Bahia, where it had not rained 

 in 2 years. 



One does not have to travel far after reaching Rio to do a bit of 

 plant collecting. Even within the city limits there are still vast jungles 

 covering the mountainsides high above the inhabited area. These rain 



