The New York Botanical Garden (NY), Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Herbario Nacional Colombiano (COL) are working together to produce a specimen-based checklist of the vascular plants of Las Orqu\u00eddeas National Park, in Antioquia, Colombia. To date, at least 2,476 species of vascular plants have been documented within the park and links to the herbarium records and photographs of most of them are found in this website.<\/p>\n
Las Orqu\u00eddeas National Park is nested on the western slopes of Colombia\u2019s Western Cordillera. It boasts an enormous altitudinal gradient (300\u20133,450 m) and consequent range of vegetation, from lowland rainforests (ca. 300\u20131,000 m) to premontane (ca. 1,000\u20132,000 m) and montane forests (ca. 1,000\u20133,200 m) and, as recently confirmed by our botanical expeditions, scattered high-altitude p\u00e1ramos (ca. 3,200\u20133,450 m). True pluvial forests cover most of Las Orqu\u00eddeas National Park (29,118 ha), with an annual rainfall of 3,000-4,000 mm, dropping to 2,500 mm in the p\u00e1ramo. In general, the forests below 2,000 m are considered to be part of the Choc\u00f3 phytogeographic region (Rangel-Ch. et al. 2004) while the remainder is Andean.
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