PREFACE

Since I started working on this book in 2008 I have been fortunate enough to return to the cloud forests of Ecuador for a separate research project each winter. This has afforded me the opportunity to both add to and improve this guide. It has also expanded the study area slightly. About 50 of the new species in this edition were photographed in the primary forests of Reserva Los Cedros, 40 km north of Mindo.

This work is still not a comprehensive flora of the Andean cloud forest or even of the area directly around Mindo, Ecuador. To do justice to the diverse and abundant plant species would take volumes. This guide does provide guidance in identifying a subset of the most common and visible species.

While hardly an expert on the flora of the neotropics, by spending months in the field, and drawing on a diversity of resources, I put together the type of field guide that I would have loved to have had when I first came to the cloud forest. It is my sincere hope that this guide will inspire appreciation and further study of the plant world for both locals and visitors alike.

Tobías Policha
March, 2011