Pearson - 1988 53_33 Campsidium November 22- Puerto Blest. Rosendo Fraga says that the hummingbirds here are using mostly this vine fir food at this season. He is of course interested in coevolutions and is interested that something eats into the side of the tubular magenta-red flowers, thereby short-circuiting the pollination mechanism. He finds numerous flowers on the ground, many of them with holes in the side, and he doesn't know what makes the holes. He implied that some of the flowers up in the trees (it climbs on bamboo, bushes, and trees) have holes also, but I didn't get a clear idea of how many. He provided us with 3 or 4 blossoms that had been opened. Under a dissecting scope the holes look like they might have been made by mice, and in one of them the entrance was a double scoop just the right size for mouse incisors. None of the dozen or more blossoms that we picked up along the Lago Frias road had holes in them. The fallen blossoms contain the stamens but lack the pistil, which stays behind when the corolla falls off. We took some entire blossoms home and put two into each of three cages of Akodon longipilis. Within an hour, one of the blossoms had been bitten into on the side in a manner very similar to those gathered by Fraga in the wild. Wouldn't it be fun if the climbing endemic mouse, Irenomys, attacked Campsidium flowers? Some of the stamens of those attacked had been cut through. November 23- Bariloche. The captive Akodon longipilis at into several more blossoms, but they don't seem to eat the whole blossom. Maybe attracted by the nectar? The stamens are hairy at the base, which must act as a sponge for nectar, but the base of the stamens is not eaten.