from the December 20, 2009 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
PEPEROMIAS
Lots of homes up North feature potted peperomias, especially the kinds with attractively crinkled, variegated, succulent leaves. If you've grown them you know that in general they like moist air and can survive in fairly shadowy places.

The other day I was tickled and a little surprised to find a wild peperomia growing in the reserve here. Farther north and west in the Yucatan I've not seen peperomias, for the dry seasons there are just too severe for them. In the Yucatan, the farther northwest you go the drier it gets. Peperomias become common farther south and east of here. I think we must be right at the northwest extreme for them.

Above you can see a small part of the plant or colony I found, growing thickly on a tree trunk to about eight feet high. I'm calling this PEPEROMIA ANGUSTATA, a wide-ranging species found from Mexico to northern South America. It's distinguished from similar peperomias found near here by having strong secondary leaf-veins arising from the leaf bases and more or less paralleling the midveins nearly all the way to the leaf tips. Also, most species don't grow in such large clumps.

The long, slender, yellowish thing is the plant's flower spike covered with probably more than a thousand tiny, much-reduced flowers bearing just two stamens each, and a single pistil subtended by a scale. This species' spikes also are exceptionally long and slender compared to those of most other peperomia species.