Flowers of Ecuador's Páramo

We can't leave Ecuador without including a few photos of the spectacular flowers at Papallacta Pass near Quito! I don't know what most of them are, but hope that you'll enjoy them anyway.

The area is within Cayambe-Coca National Park, at about 12,000 feet in elevation.

Strange and beautiful

(Photos by Narca)

A lovely composite

One of the many cushion plants that are common to high elevations the world around

Judging by the leaf, this is one of the 4500 species of melastome.

Perhaps a day-flying moth? I can't find a heliconid anything like it!

At last, something familiar –– a paintbrush

A pea with very compact flowers

Distinctive –– does anyone know this one?

Another puzzle

Hummers like this Bromerea species, shown here with Equisetum.

A passion flower, Passiflora mixta, with only a rudimentary fringe around the pistil and stamens. This plant is mainly – or only – pollinated by Sword-billed Hummingbirds (photos above and below)

Sword-billed Hummingbird photographed on a 2010 trip to Ecuador.

This aster, another composite, is a conspicuous shrub.

A species of Solanum, in the tomato family

Farewell to Ecuador, for the time being –– and next stop: Baja California's cape region!