For six weeks between December 1998 and January 1999 I travelled around the northern regions of Brazil and southern Venezuela. The main goal of this trip was to climb the isolated 3014m high Mt.Neblina, the highest mountain in Brazil. It is located on the rainforest-covered Brazilian/Venezuelan border and is home to fantastic plants such as Heliamphora tatei var.neblinae and Drosera meristocaulis. The climb was successfully accomplished together with seven other CP friends, two experienced guides, three Yanomami Indian porters, lots of money, lots of patience, and A LOT OF HIKING. We found many interesting CPs, including H.tatei var.neblinae, D.roraimae, a new Drosera species, Utricularia quelchii, U.campbelliana, U.alpina, U.humboldtii, and others. But we did not find D.meristocaulis.

Afterwards, five of the expedition members returned home to their respective countries, but two stayed on with me to explore the Amazon a while longer. Although I’m Brazilian, a biologist, and have travelled around the world, I had never been to the Amazon before. And I didn’t know when I’d have a chance to return to these distant corners of my huge country, so I decided to take the opportunity that I was already there to explore a bit more.

We first explored an isolated tepuy in northern Brazil called Serra do Aracá. With a plateau at c.1100m in altitude and higher peaks reaching around 1500m, this mountain is part of a series of poorly-explored tepuys reaching over 2000m, on the border between Venezuela and the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Roraima. There we found no Heliamphora unfortunately and again, like on Mt.Neblina, no Genlisea. We found tone or two unidentified Drosera, possibly new species, as well as several small terrestrial Utricularia, including the rare U.longeciliata which has fringed calyx lobes which reminded me of a Dionaea trap.

One of my friends then had to go home, but two of us headed further north through the state of Roraima to southern Venezuela, where we found so many CP species (around 30) that I won’t even list them. A few highlights were Heliamphora heterodoxa, Genlisea guianensis, Brocchinia reducta, Catopsis berteroniana, and six species of Drosera. And we didn’t even climb any of the famous tepuys, everything was found in the savanna-like plains of the Gran Sabana , between 1100 and 1450m in altitude.

Anyways, the subject of this article is D.sessilifolia. Known to occur from northern Venezuela to southwestern Brazil, D.sessilifolia is the second most widespread Drosera species in South America, losing only to D.communis. Further research in other countries that border Brazil, such as Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Surinam, may yet invert this position and give D.sessilifolia the first place title. Unlike the common perennial D.communis, D.sessilifolia is an annual and is very difficult to find in the field, partially because of its ephemeral nature.

While heading north for the Gran Sabana by bus from Boa Vista (capital of Roraima), we had our faces glued to the windows, admiring the beautiful scenery and drooling with all the potential CP habitats. Then we stopped at a roadside bar, where the bus driver shouted out "Ten minutes!" Those were the shortest ten minutes of my life! I ran straight out into the bush, heading for a small river surrounded by the typical buriti palms always found along waterways in savanna areas of Brazil. The grassy fields bordering the buritis are always a great place for CPs, and sure enough we found plenty of U.simulans and a tiny reddish Drosera, which is probably D.biflora, with spatulate leaves in small, loose rosettes tightly pressed to the ground, and very delicate inflorescences only a few cm high and very thin, with usually only a single flower per scape, none of which were open. The bus driver almost left without me, although my friend was doing his best to hold him up while I clumsily dashed back across the plains and through the tall grasses in my flip-flops.

We finally found D.sessilifolia on our way back to Brazil from the Gran Sabana, when we stopped at the same roadside bar. From herbarium specimens, I knew this species was common in those plains surrounding Boa Vista, capital of Roraima, and area which is close to sea level, and is usually blistering hot. I checked a few different habitats at that location, close to the river, but only saw the same D.biflora and U.simulans. Then I went to take a leak by a tree which I’d passed by a few times while zig-zagging along the grassy areas between the river and the buriti palm-lined river. And that’s when I spotted it: D.sessilifolia! I only found a few plants, the yellowish rosettes hidden under the semi-shade of grasses, nearly invisible.

Although D.sessilifolia is one of the most widespread Drosera spp. in S.America, it’s frustratingly rare, occurring in very specific and restricted habitats. It’s also an annual and extremely difficult to catch during its brief flowering period. As with most Drosera spp., D.sessilifolia will only open its flowers for a few hours in the morning, but like its close cousin D.burmannii (from which it is nearly indistinguishable) it’s exasperatingly shy to flower, hardly opening up its petals completely. If a single cloud wandering accross a bright blue sky crosses paths briefly with the sun, it can result in closure of all the D.sessilifolia flowers. I was very fortunate to witness an open flower of D.sessilifolia the very first time I saw this species in the wild, in July 1992 when visiting a vast floodplain in western Brazil called the Pantanal. Unfortunately that was not only the first time I saw an open flower of D.sessilifolia, but also the last.

Over several years of CP hunting all around Brazil, I was only able to find about five very distant D.sessilifolia populations in the wild – all between 1000-1500km away from my hometown São Paulo. On several occasions I made careful plans to travel all the way to one of these sites at the right time of year with the intent of catching open flowers of D.sessilifolia, only to find that the rains had arrived too late or too early that year in that specific region, shifting the short flowering period backwards or forwards in the calendar. I was even kept from seeing flowers on a few occasions due to cloudy weather or unpredictable situations which caused me to arrive at the sites too late in the afternoon, only to find all flowers had already closed. All these difficulties over the years turned D.sessilifolia flowers into an obsession for me.

So when I stumbled upon those D.sessilifolia growing near Boa Vista, the first thing I did was to look for flower scapes. It was early to mid dry season, which is the best time to search for D.sessilifolia flowers, so I had my fingers crossed -- for the “Nth” time. Yet it was already past noon, so I knew there was practically no chance of seeing any flowers open that day. Sure enough, several plants had inflroescences, we were in luck.

Although no open flowers were found that afternoon, it was still great to find this rare species again, to have another chance to study it in the wild and understand better what makes it tick. I noticed that most D.sessilifolia had very short stems 1-2cm high covered in old leaves. Some plants had already even dried out completely while the ones that were still alive often only had a few very small, nearly glandless live leaves left. The dead leaves underneath the live ones showed that the plants had been previously larger and were already shrinking, dying.

We soon headed back to B.Vista, checked into a hotel, and changed our bus tickets to Manaus for the following day. We wanted to return to the D.sessilifolia site the following morning to search for flowers. We then hung around the hotel, resting all afternoon. Every night for the previous week or two we’d been getting six hours or less of sleep. We were simply feeling physically wasted from all the highly strenuous hiking at Neblina, Aracá and Gran Sabana. So I took the opportunity that the B.Vista area is hot as hell (I don't know how D.sessilifolia and others survive there!!) to finally take a fantastically delicious cold shower, long and thorough, to be free of all the grime I hadn't been able to remove over the 2 previous weeks, when either the streams were too icy or the weather just too cold for a long cold shower.

The next day we had to be back at B.Vista to catch the 4pm bus to Manaus. That left us little time to explore in the morning. So we rushed back to the D.sessilifolia site we’d discovered the day before. It was another hot sunny day on the vast grassy plains and we had all our fingers crossed. Would I finally see those damn D.sessilifolia flowers open that day, for only the second time in my life?

After some careful searching around the thick grasses where we’d seen the yellow rosettes the day before, to my relief we finally uncovered a single, tiny, wide-open, pink-lilac D.sessilifolia flower! What joy!! I was finally “face-to-flower” again with this rare gift of nature! I began clicking away with my camera, happy that I would finally obtain some clear shots of those curious multifid stigmata, similar to tiny gloves. All I could think of while admiring that tiny amethyst, was that I hoped it wouldn’t take me yet another eight and a half years before once again catching wild D.sessilifolia in flower!

It took us a while before we moved on again to look around for more plants, but once we did we quickly found a larger D.sessilifolia population right nearby. Unfortunately a cloud had been obstructing the sun for the previous fifteen minutes or so and although it was only about 9:30am, the two or three D.sessilifolia flowers I was able to find had obviously just closed. No more open flowers remained. Still, I was more than happy to have been lucky enough to see at least one.

We explored further dowriver for a kilometer or so, on both margins, but found nothing interesting except a large terrestrial turtle. I checked again before we left and could find no open flowers of D.biflora either. The closed ones seemed to be a light pink-lilac. Curiously, this Drosera seemed to occur only around D.sessilifolia, in slightly more humid soil.

After returning to S.Paulo, I couldn’t get my mind off how restricted D.sessilifolia and D.biflora seemed to be at that site. Why didn’t we see any more along the river? I then remembered how in cultivation D.sessilifolia is always a glimmer of what it is in the wild, remaining tiny in all aspects. The only thing that occurs to me now is that maybe these two species require fertilization. At the place where we found them near B.Vista, they grew only in two small populations not too far from the road and the roadside bar, where there were even some cows and horses. Maybe they’re dependent on more fertile patches of soils, which may explain why D.sessilifolia at least is so rare. Well, even if this is all wrong, it’s still valid as a tip for those of you trying to cultivate D.sessilifolia. FERTILIZE IT!!