Spring 2005 Issue:
Tribute to Flowers..."Chorographers of Nature"
(CHO.ROG.RA.PHY n. the technique of systematically mapping a region or district)
Ernst Luhrs
In 1964 the great american naturalist Marston Bates wrote an essay "A World Apart" for the book "The Land and Wildlife of South America". His introduction reads:
"For many years my wife an I lived in a small town in eastern Colombia, at the base of the Andes where these greatest of South America's mountains give way abruptly to the great plains, the LLANOS, of the Orinoco Basin. The fascination of the place never dimmed...In front of us, to the east, the band of forest along the mountain's edge gave way gradually to open savannas and finally to the grassy plains that stretched with scarcely a break to the horizon...we were on the margin of the greatest untamed, unexplored wilderness in the world"...
Now, almost half a century later, we are able to come "closer" thanks to our guest-photographer Ernst Luhrs who captured and shares with us this marvelous place through the beauty of its flowers.
It shows how in the 21st. century "worlds are not so apart" after all.
In the center of the country, Colombia, the LLANOS ORIENTALES expanse...
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO continue...)