Bromeliads along the ACEER canopy walkway in Amazonian Peru
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Murray, D., M. Lowman, and P. Wittman. 1997. Bromeliads along the ACEER canopy walkway in Amazonian Peru. Journal of the Bromeliad Society 47:54–59.
Peru has 17 genera and 420 species of bromeliads of which 239 are endemic (Brako and Zarucchi 1993). The list presented in this paper all occur along or near the aerial walkway at the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER) in northern Peru. The ACEER is located on the Amazon Biosphere Reserve which encompasses two hundred and fifty thousand acres of primary rain forest within the upper Amazon Basin. The ACEER is approximately 4 hours by boat from Iquitos, down the Amazon River and up the Napo River to the Sucusari tributary. Iquitos is served by weekly direct flights from Miami, Florida and daily flights from Lima, Peru.
One of the outstanding features of the ACEER is its 1200 foot long canopy walkway that leads the visitor from ground level to a height of 118 feet. This multilevel system of aerial platforms and suspension bridges allows easy access for both scientists and eco-tourists to observe the rain forest canopy and its diverse community of epiphytes.