BCSJ Volume 15 No. 4, 1997, pag 189-192

Frailea cataphracta. Grows in Brazil as well
by Norbert Gerloff, edited by Rene Zahra. Photos by the Author

The original habitat of Gymnocalycium buenekeri Swales (HU363), is reported to be on a hill, 4 km north of the city of Sao Francisco d'Assis, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, but in 1992, we tried in vain to find it. I can say quite safely that by the end of 1996, Wolfgang Gemmrich and myself had knowledge of more habitats with populations of G. buenekeri, than anyone else. However that original habitat from where L. Horst and W. Uebelmann had collected HU363 reserved a big surprise for us.
My friend Wolfgang had been to the region where Notocactus fuscus grows several times. This is the region around Sao Francisco d'Assis. On each trip he always spends six to seven weeks wandering through the different habitats. It is because of this that after his third trip to Rio Grande do Sul, he had seen more habitats of G. buenekeri than even the people who live there. Wolfgang and myself are very good friends and we exchange a lot of information. After the Christmas of 1992, I was on a trip with Ari Nilson and Gustavo Hamester when 15 km, northeast of the above mentioned city, we found a big population of G. buenekeri (Gf260). This species was growing together with Notocactus fuscus Ritter (Gf263), N. glaucinus var. gracilis Ritter (Gf262), and N. megapotamicus var. crucicentrus Ritter (Gf261) and these were all growing with other plants as well. We had however missed the hill with HU363. On returning to Europe, from Ludwig Bercht I learnt that he had also found G. buenekeri, 2 km further to the east from where we were. We only had a photograph of the original hill on which HU363 grew, but this was difficult to find, because most of the hills in that region looked very much alike.
In 1994, in the Austrian journal Gymnocalycium an article on G. buenekeri was published by K. Herm and A. Hofacher. It was with its help that I was finally able to find the exact locality of HU363. With this new information I telephoned my friend Wolfgang who at that time happened to be in Brazil, and gave him the right directions. Several days later he dedicated a whole day to look at this habitat. Wolfgang, Hamester, and Helmut Lohman, the driver of the car, drove into a big fazenda 4 km, north of the city of Sao Francisco d'Assis. Wolfgang and Gustavo searched for about five hours on the sides of the hill. This hill has its sides nearly vertical and is about 800 metres from north to south and 70 metres from east to west. Its height is only between 20 and 30 metres, while its top is flat and rocky.
Up on the flat top they found Frailea fulviseta (WG59) and Echinopsis oxygona. Although most of the sides were vertical, some parts were covered with stones and rocks ranging in size from 20 centimetres to 2 metres across. Between these stones grow tall patches of grass, shrubs, and trees. The exact place where G. buenekeri grows is on the north facing side of the hill, between stones and under the overhanging parts of stones and boulders. This was strange, because normally G. buenekeri is found in the shade, but this population is always exposed on the north, and here in Brazil this is the sunny side. At our own expense we later learnt that it was useless to search for this species on the other sides of this hill.
While the other two were up on the hill, the driver, Helmut Lohman had to wait by the car. He had parked the car in the shade of a tree, in a valley between two hills. Every hour or so he had to move the car with the moving shadow of the tree. The wait was long and most of the time he slept. Suddenly, while moving the car he noticed some dark bodied fraileas beside and right under the car. He collected some of these small plants to take home as a present for his wife, but completely omitting to tell Wolfgang and Gustavo about his find.
Four months later I went to Brazil and discovered the little plants standing in a pot on Helmut’s kitchen windowsill. When I heard just from where these plants originated I became very anxious to see their habitat. These fraileas looked exactly like the plant I knew as F. cataphracta, but the strange thing was that they were found at a place about 400 km away from the well known habitats of this species in Paraguay.
When I found out about this very interesting discovery I was at the end of my trip and so didn't have enough time to drive to their habitat some 600 km away. On returning home I passed on the details of this new discovery to another friend, Karl Heinz Prestlé who is a well known specialist on fraileas.
In the Easter of 1995, both Prestlé and myself went to Brazil at the same time and we both very much wanted to visit that place where F. cataphracta grew in Brazil. When I finally came to the same tree, in the shade of which a year before the car had been parked, I saw a Fanta box hanging on it. This was the sign that Karl Heinz Prestlé had been there some days before me. Two hours later after seeing for myself and confirming the existence of F. cataphracta in this habitat, I found the fourth population of G. buenekeri, on the northern side of the first hill, but all these plants were in a very bad condition. We found only a dozen fraileas each, so we decided to start propagating them intensively. Karl Heinz even gave these plants the provisional name of F. pseudocataphracta n.n., but we could not find any marked difference between these plants and the original description of F. cataphracta (Dams) Britton & Rose, that grows in Paraguay. Why shouldn't F. cataphracta grow here as well? The soil was the same (bright red sand) as in parts of Paraguay.
Wanting to see for himself these plants in their native habitat, Wolfgang returned to Brazil in October 1996. In Brazil, October is summer-time, but even though it was summer Wolfgang met with a lot of rain on this trip. The 21st October 1996 was a very hot, sunny, day. On this day he visited the habitat he wanted to see. Again, he found his way from the tree in the shadow of which the car had been parked. From there he went down onto the plain. On coming back to Europe he told me that on the plain he found thousands of plants of F. cataphracta all in flower. He described how at 12 noon when the flowers were all open you might think that the whole plain was covered with yellow flowers. He found out that while in the dry season sand covers most of these plants, with rain they come out of the ground to a height of between 10 and 20 mm. In 1996 the plants were exposed because it had been raining shortly before Wolfgang's visit. Most of the wonderful pictures included with this article were taken on this particular occasion.
As you can see, when visiting the natural habitat of the plants we are so interested in, you must always be on the look out for pleasant surprises like this and meet with certain species where you least expect them to be. All this shows that there is still a lot of work to be done in the native habitat of the plants we love so much.