3rd part: meeting with Pinguicula vallisneriifolia

[kisscool_38]

After visiting the fantastic type location of Pinguicula mundi Blanca, Jamilena, Ruiz Rejon & Reg. Zamora, we continue our trip heading south to meet one of the biggest Pinguicula species in the world: Pinguicula vallisneriifolia Webb.

Roads are long and sinuous in the Sierra de Segura, and not always in a good state. We move foward as we can across conifer forests and alpine moores where we find some marvellous orchids (that I'll show in another topic) and then we go down inside gorges of various rivers. We scan at every moment landscapes to descover stations the butterwort with vallisneria leaves: Pinguicula vallisneriifolia Webb. The research of the first station has been long and fruitless until at a curve of the road, a chalky spring and its small associated bog were revealed to our eyes:

 

We are far from the vertical calcareous cliffs we are used to see on pictures available on internet. But I take my binoculars and scan this location to see some lovely violet flowers of the butterwort. We cross as we can the river on wood log and big rocks to reach the plants.

Surprisingly, the butterworts at this place don't grow on solid calcareous rocks as I saw before on pictures. Here plants grows between between calcareous stones:

 

in thin sand:

 

a dripping wall:

 

or in an amphibious way!

 

Flowers are really variable, with a typical color:

 

a darker color, without any vein here:

 

to really white colored flowers.

This population has characteristic very wide summer leaves:

 

And we return to the car searching for more locations of this beautiful species.

Regards

Edited February 21, 2018 by kisscool_38

[Kevin Tonnerre]

And again, fantastic report, Aymeric!

I especially enjoyed seeing the plants not growing on dripping walls, but "on the floor", thats actually a first for me.

[Zlatokrt]

Very interesting, thank you for these pictures. I have seen this species grown "on the floor", but never seen any picture of it from nature.

[natapongw]

Thanks for sharing, nice photo :)

[Daniel O.]

Hi Aymeric ,

interesting report and really nice pictures you have taken there.

It´s really interesting that they are also growing "on the floor".

Are there a lot of malformed flowers or only a few?

Thanks for sharing.

Best regards,

Dani

[jimscott]

Great in situe!