Chiloé: Denizens of The Valdivian Rainforest

Chiloé is a large island off the coast of Chile, near the Lake Region. It has a climate rather like that of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State: its west coast and uplands get a torrential 120″ inches of rain a year. We walked in the mossy Valdivian temperate rain forests, stayed in lovely lodges in two of the national parks, and went out on rivers, estuaries, and the Pacific ocean.

We had hoped to see a variety of small rare mammals, but of course we didn’t. With one exception: we saw four Southern Pudu, the second smallest deer in the world (smaller than a muntjac, but beaten to bottom spot by the Northern Pudu!). They are only 14-18″ tall, and 14-30lbs. Here is a male:

His unforked antlers are no more than 3.5 in long and very delicate.

The first one we saw was a female, and, lucky us, she had a tiny spotted fawn:

The IUCN considers these deer Near Threatened overall, and the Chiloé population has been isolated from the mainland for over 200,000 years, and is a particularly vulnerable separate gene pool.

All that rain means rivers, and waterfalls,

amidst lush rainforest with giant ferns:

and Gunnera tinctoria, known as “nalca”, everywhere:*

The leaves can be 2.5m across:

And beneath them is a secretive lush world of spiny stalks

and 1m tall flower spikes.

The stalks are peeled and eaten just like we eat rhubarb.

In November it is early summer down in Chile, and the wildflowers are starting. This is a delicate vine called Luzuriaga polyphylla, endemic to Chile:

Fuchsias, like many of these plants familiar from our UK or US gardens, come from this part of the world. This is a wild Magellanic Fuchsia:

and so is this:

A ragged looking plant with orange flowers with scarlet centres called Loasa acerifolia:

and finally a Chilean Lantern Tree, Crinodendron hookerianum, found only in Chile; it is much loved by hornets, so we beat a hasty retreat:

Everywhere we saw Chilean Firebush, but I’ll let that wait for another day.

PS * Around the time of anti-goverment protests in 2019, a vegetable vendor in Puerto Montt dressed himself in nalca leaves. He went viral, and became a symbol of the protests, known as Nalcaman: