Pinguicula jimburensis — Vorstman's Guide to the Carnivorous Plants

No photograph of this species under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain is in the guide yet.

Identification

A butterwort of the ordinary rosette type: a flat rosette of entire, sticky leaves lying on saturated páramo ground, the upper surface covered in glandular droplets that light up in raking light. Slender scapes rise from the centre, each with one two-lipped, spurred flower. The species was split out of the old, broad concept of Pinguicula calyptrata on the basis of deviating floral characters; anyone who wants to check those characters must go to the original description. No measurements have therefore been entered in this guide: the only dependable figures sit in a 2023 paper that most readers will not have beside the plant, and guessing serves nobody in a species known from one site.

Similar species

The species it was filed under until 2023, Pinguicula calyptrata, occurs in páramo throughout Ecuador and Colombia and is the only real risk of confusion; the differences lie in the structure of the flower. The second new species from the same paper, P. ombrophila, grows five hundred metres lower on a vertical rock face and can therefore be separated in the field by habitat alone. Because each of the three has its own small area in southern Ecuador, in practice the locality is the most important character. For anyone who does not want to collect material — and with this species one should not — it is also the only workable one.

The trap and how it works

A flypaper trap in one of the coldest and wettest settings in the tropics. The leaf carries stalked glands holding a sticky droplet and sessile glands that release digestive enzymes only once prey is lying on them; the margin then rolls slowly over the catch so the fluid pools in a shallow dish. At three thousand four hundred metres in the páramo the temperature is low all year and swings mainly between day and night. Organic matter therefore breaks down slowly and usable nitrogen is scarce; a captured midge yields the plant something faster than its roots can extract from the saturated ground.

Habitat and ecology

The saturated shore of a highland lagoon in the páramo at about three thousand four hundred metres (W7), with adjacent wet, short-turfed ground above the treeline (R5, W6). It is an open, permanently wet site with no tall vegetation, in a landscape of tussock grass, cushion plants and peaty soil. Rainfall is high and fog almost daily. The place lies in the Amotape-Huancabamba zone, the low gap in the Andes between Ecuador and Peru known for its concentration of species with minute ranges — and this species is a textbook case.

Distribution and elevation

Known from a single site in southern Ecuador, in the high Andes close to the Peruvian border, and therefore endemic to Ecuador. Only a few dozen plants have been counted. The site lies inside a protected area, which helps with the immediate threats, but a range of this size is by definition vulnerable. Whether the species also occurs on the Peruvian side of the border is unknown; that part of the Amotape-Huancabamba zone is poorly surveyed and comparable highland lagoons are not rare there.

Recorded (one-degree cells)

Distribution based solely on records at GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), not on TDWG regions — those are often far larger than the actual range. The light halo is the area around a record, the dark core the record itself. The darker square is the only one-degree cell — roughly a hundred and ten kilometres — in which the species has been recorded, from all GBIF records. This is coarser than for most species because hardly any record of this plant carries an accurate coordinate. It shows where the species has been seen, not where it occurs: an empty square means nothing.

Forms and variation

No wild varieties are recognised, and for a species consisting of one population of a few dozen plants that would make no sense. What the file does contain is that until 2023 this plant was simply regarded as a deviating population of P. calyptrata — a reminder that within a broadly drawn species concept 'variation' sometimes turns out to be another species. The authors of the description note that the remaining Ecuadorian material still holds more difference than one species can carry, so this is probably not the end of it. No natural hybrids are reported.

Where and when to see it

This is not a species to go looking for. The only known site lies in protected high country and holds a few dozen plants; visits by collectors are a real risk here, not a theoretical one. Anyone walking the southern Ecuadorian páramo can still learn where such plants stand: on the saturated bare margins of highland lagoons and in the wet hollows between the tussocks, where the ground is permanently waterlogged. Finding a butterwort rosette there, the right thing to do is photograph it, record the place and report it to a herbarium — not to dig.

Conservation status

The species has not been assessed for the global IUCN Red List and is not in CITES, so there is no international category. For a species described in 2023 that is no surprise, but what is known leaves little to the imagination: one known site, a few dozen mature plants, and a habitat that depends on a highland lagoon in a climate that is shifting. The describing authors point out that the páramo water systems of this zone are sensitive to warming and changing rainfall. The area is protected, which limits direct pressure, but protection on paper does not hold the fog belt in place.

Scientific name

Pinguicula jimburensis | Pérez, Tobar & Henning, 2023

Described by Álvaro J. Pérez, Tobar, Burgess and Tilo Henning in 2023, in PhytoKeys 222: 153–171. The species occurs in southern Ecuador, in the vicinity of Jimbura, near the Cordillera del Cóndor. The species epithet refers to Jimbura, the locality in Ecuador where the species was discovered.

World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), via Plants of the World Online (POWO), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.