STUDYING THE GRASSES OF VENEZUELA 



By AGNES CHASE 



Custodian, Section of Grasses, U. S. National Museum 



Last January I received an invitation from the Venezuelan Min- 

 istry of Agriculture to visit Venezuela to study the grasses and to 

 suggest methods to further the study of the Gramineae. The Min- 

 istry had, from time to time, extended similar invitations to other 

 botanists and to zoologists. The boat I was on stopped at Curacao for 

 about 4 hours, giving opportunity for a brief collecting trip. Land- 

 ing at La Guaira, Venezuela, February 28, I proceeded directly to 

 Dr. Pittier's laboratory in Caracas. 



La Guaira, the port of Caracas, lies at the foot of the seaward face 

 of the Cordillera de la Costa (fig. 63). Caracas is only 8 miles dis- 

 tant, but the steep winding road is 23 miles long, in many places 

 cut out of the face of the cliffs (fig. 64). Dr. Henri Pittier, director 

 of the Servicio Botanico of the Ministry of Agriculture, has been 

 the outstanding botanist of Venezuela for 23 years (fig. 65). For 

 17 years before that he was in the United States Department of 

 Agriculture. He has been instrumental in assuring the preservation 

 of an extensive area of cloud forest in the state of Aragua, the 

 Parque National, and in bringing about the enactment of laws for- 

 bidding the burning of the wooded slopes and the grassy plains. 



After a day's botanizing in the foothills of the coast range I had 

 opportunity to make a trip by motor car to Merida in the high valley 

 between the two ranges of the Andes, the Sierra del Norte and 

 Sierra Nevada de Merida, studying and collecting grasses en route. 

 The roads, where completed, winding up the steep mountain sides, 

 are marvels of engineering. It was near the end of the dry season 

 and the whole country was suffering from drought, but this is the 

 flowering time of some of the trees, and the slopes were aglow with 

 the golden flowers of Tecoma chrysantha, the orange-red flowers of 

 species of Eryihrina, and the flowers of many other trees and shrubs 

 only slightly less gorgeous. The Andes are not wooded, open stony 

 grassland extending to the paramo, where the truly alpine flora occurs. 

 Below the paramo the steep stony slopes were beset with frailejones, 

 species of Espeletia, a tall composite with a mass of woolly foliage at 

 the base, thick leafy stems, and masses of old flower heads at the 

 summit, the whole a woolly brown. "Frailejones" means big brothers 

 or monks, these great plants marching up the slopes having sug- 



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