Post 10: The Trees

Guanacaste tree (I think) in cow pasture

When you visit Costa Rica, it’s impossible not to notice the trees. Some are massive, arching over the entire highway while others form canopies of colors when they burst into bloom. Others like the figs dangle aerial roots that reach from branch to ground and then root, creating a forest of trunks from a single tree.

Cenizaro tree in another pasture. Notice that its width is more than three times its height!

Trees in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica help define the land, the people and the habitats of the animals that reside here. Many of the trees mix together to form tangled jungles but other trees stand out either by sheer size or paradoxically, during the dry season, their blooms.
I went on an expedition this morning to try to find a huge tree that I can see from the house that towers above all of its neighbors on the nearby peninsula. It presides over the slope, a great spreadying canopy of green among many smaller deciduous trees. Since Wendy has been tutoring me on native trees including their historic uses and medicinal values, I was especially curious to determine what type of tree this was, though I already had my suspicions.
With small dog Itsy as my companion, I hiked via trail over the hill and once I could glimpse it, I left the trail and worked my way down a steep slope towards it, following faint animal trails. Though I wore boots and carried a big stick, I moved slowly on the lookout for snakes which could include rattlers, boas and the deadly fer de lance. In spite of some thick underbrush, I made it to the tree without incident and was able to confirm that it was a massive Guanacaste tree which lends its name to this region. These grand tree is at least 300 years old.

Guanacaste trees were often spared from cutting when forests here were cleared for cattle pastures a century or so ago.  They provided welcome shade in this hot climate and still shelter cattle and tired travelers today.
The special present that I received when I finally reached the shelter of the giant branches was a pair of Long-tailed Manakins. I saw the female first who is a rather drab olive green but has cute bright orange legs.

The male is black with a blazing red crown and spectacular turquoise cape that are barely evident in this long telephoto shot. His long tail feathers are easily seen, however.

Another tree of note is this unusual looking tree that is often used as a living fence and goes by many names. In the Caribbean it is called the Gumbo Limbo tree but here it is called either El Indio Desnudo which means the Indian’s clothes but my favorite local name for it is the Tourist Tree which its peeling red bark humorously alludes to!

I discovered this tree (below) on another hike and I love its amazing seed pods. I think it should be called the flying urchin tree since they look just like sea urchins to me but in Costa Rica it is called the monkey comb tree.

Most striking are the trees which periodically flower here. Since they often flower en masse during the dry season, their crowns are literally covered with bright flowers, a car-stopping show if you drive past one of these beauties in bloom. This is the Cortez Amarillo, one of the most spectacular of the trees that have bloomed since I have been here.

A number of tropical trees have cottony fluff around their seeds (kind of like our cottonwood trees) which help the seeds drift and disperse in the wind. Called kapok, it was once used to fill pillows, mattresses, and even stuffed animals. The towering Ceiba tree's (also called the Kapok tree) fibers are also bouyant and water resistant. The tree was cultivated for its kapok which filled most life preservers made until recently and would have been responsible for floating many shipwreck survivors including those on the Titanic.

Kapok blowing in the wind

Poroporo trees have big yellow flowers that are followed by cotton-ball like kapok and the balsa tree across the road creates so much fuzz that it is clogging the pool filters.

Poroporo flowers and seed pods

Fallen balsa tree kapok looks like fuzzy caterpillars

Everyone who's been to Hawaii is familiar with the beautiful plumeria (or frangiapani) flower that makes such wonderfully fragrant leis. The same flower grows wild here although it is called Flor Blanca (white flower). The delicate beauty of the easily bruised flowers does not suggest the rugged tenacity of the tree which manages to sprout and grow in the cruelest of habitats. Almost all of the dry rocky headlands here are decorated with blooming plumeria which grow seemingly out of solid rock, and present their fragrant bouquets to us to enjoy along the fractured shore.

Baby plumeria tree