(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Saturday Morning Garden Blog Vol. 19.6 Part 1: Costa Rica: Flowers, Birds, Butterflies, Animals [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-11 I’m a gardening geek about native plants in Texas and a serious nature nerd. This was my first time in Costa Rica. I became 100% hooked by the beauty and biodiversity of the entire country. And the country’s genuine dedication to preserving nature and environmental stability. To start, I’ll recount one of the last things I did before leaving the country: a 45 minute Sansa flight on a single prop twelve passengers commuter plane (Cessna 208B Caravan) from Golfito (southwest CR) to San Jose. The plane looked like a butterfly on the tarmac compared to the 737MAX Boeing jets I’d been on. The paved runway in Golfito was cut through the jungle. It reminded me of many movies I’ve seen showing the exact same type of runway and scenery I was watching roll past me. Only this time, I was there. Breathtaking towering palms, massive mango trees, banana trees, hibiscus everywhere — and then: the birdseye view of the greenest, most rugged landscape I’ve ever seen. Hard to describe awe. Attempt made at a few photos. Green as far as the eye can see in all directions. Costa Rica is a volcanic land with active volcanoes. Yes, that’s the wheel of the landing gear The clouds in the distance are the famous Monte Verde cloud forest Costa Rica is both sophisticated and wild at the same time; hot/humid and cold/windy; slow driving cars and fast motorcycles; gravel, pot-holed roads and paved highways; horses and riders; old bicycles and old riders; Brahma bulls with nose rings; cows; iguanas; monkeys; coati (Costa Rican raccoon — pezotes); macaws, hummingbirds and butterflies; beaches and mountains; cacao and sugar cane. Gallo Pinto. And coffee — always and everywhere — coffee. One of the oddest things: when traffic accidents occur between car/bike/motorcycle etc., the entire scene is left exactly as it happened while waiting for the police. More than once we negotiated with oncoming traffic on a narrow road blocked by a motorcycle/car. No raised voices or fists… Probably because Costa Rica is one of the happiest (and most beautiful) places in the world. We in the US truly need to learn the Pura Vida way of life. * * * * * First place visited: Grecia. Regular airbnb lodging — private home — for Judy (my long time friend and travel partner) when in Costa Rica. I was lucky enough to tag along. Grecia: Decorative Lipstick palm raw fruit. Regular palm berries/fruit — not lipstick palm - is dark reddish black and creates palm oil — big business in CR. More on palm groves in Part Two. Grecia: The decorative Lipstick palm (Cyrtostachys renda) grown for its stunning red color Grecia: The biggest staghorn fern I’ve ever seen, happily growing on the veranda. Platycerium is a genus of about 18 fern species in the polypod family, Polypodiaceae. Ferns in this genus are widely known as staghorn or elkhorn ferns due to their uniquely shaped fronds. Wikipedia Grecia: Backyard hibiscus 8’ tall (eat your heart out, gardeners!) Grecia: Jade plant heaven Grecia: Birds of Paradise. Considered a standard landscape plant Grecia: Hydrangeas are everywhere and they’re all blue! They grow wild on the roadsides along with hot pink bougainvillea. Why is the color blue so rare in nature? Read here Next day I was invited to visit Sarchi. It’s the artisan town known for elaborately painted ox carts and the Else Kientzler Botanic Gardens. More here The botanic gardens provide overwhelming flora diversity and beauty beyond description. Here are a few pictures. I have not identified all of the plants/flowers/trees. Any help would be greatly appreciated. As an aside, most of the private landscapes are maintained using only manpower and a machete. No power lawn mowers, weed whackers or blowers. That in itself is heaven to me. Sarchi Else Keintzler Gardens: Colorful greeting of coleus — in every color imaginable. Gardeners’ dream? Coleus The colorful leaves come in many shades of purple, red, orange, pink, green and yellow — just about every color except blue — in dozens of patterns, shapes and sizes, from tiny, spotted and marbled to gigantic, toothed, lobed and divided. They come in upright form, mounding, creeping and trailing. The “Walking” Palm Tree. Socratea exorrhiza is a palm native to rainforests in tropical Central and South America. The tree supposedly “walks” from shade to sunlight by growing roots in the direction it wants to travel, and then allowing the old roots to lift into the air and die. Some say the process takes a couple of years, while one paleobiologist suggests the tree moves two or three centimeters per day. Sarchi: No idea what it is. Bromeliad? Ginger family? It’s just gorgeous! The discovery of how little I know about tropical plants during this visit was very humbling. More color: Sarchi: Large stand of yellow bamboo Sarchi: Black bamboo Sarchi: Unidentified ‘fuzzy’ tree-like plant. Sarchi: Baby “fuzzy tree” Sarchi: Unknown elegant beauty #1 Sarchi: Lobster-claws flowers — Heliconia Sarchi: Unknown beauty #2 Sarchi: Orchid?— lady slipper (maybe?) Sarchi: Unknown water plant — in blue! Sarchi: sensuous lobster-claws plant (Heliconia). They seem to be everywhere. Growing zone 10B. * * * * * Next stop (next day) was LaPaz Waterfall and Gardens. Read about all of it here. The accommodations are obviously first class, along with prices. Too rich for our blood. We airbnb’ed it. There is SO much to see and do at LaPaz that one day was barely enough to see monkeys, hummingbirds, macaws, toucans, sloths, butterflies (the blue morpho — there we go again with “blue”). Only saw the bottom of the waterfall from the exit road. Not enough time to see snakes, jungle cats, frogs etc. If you ever visit, wear comfortable shoes and bring a walking stick (very hilly). Some photos: End point of waterfall Higher up from the bottom Most unusual red ‘fruit/flower” No idea what it is. TOUCAN Curious, magnificent bird! Intelligent and very social. I think there were at least two types of toucans in the sanctuary. The tail feathers on this one caught my eye. Is this an aracari? Yellow-throat toucan (?) Bird seems to be saying, “Hello! Who are you and what are you doing here?” I was lucky enough to see a male/female pair of Emerald Toucanets outside of Rio Claro. No photos since the birds appeared out of nowhere to feed on bananas then disappear. Much smaller than the normal Toucan. That same banana feeding frenzy also brought the blue-gray tanager and woodpeckers. On the road I saw a blue headed motmot but the car was traveling too fast to get a good photograph. Vultures were omnipresent in the skies. Scarlet Macaws While in Quepos (Pacific beach town) a group of scarlet macaws made a daily round trip from their nesting grounds to feeding grounds on schedule: 7:00-7:10am and 4:30-4:45pm. In the Rio Claro area, there were very noisy daily round trips by large flocks of smaller parrots (red lored amazon?). Sorry, no photos. SLOTH I joined the end of a group of about 20 people plus kids to seek a peek at a sloth in it’s caged home. Shy creatures. I was the only one who found one sleeping directly above the cage door. My only photo. Once the group saw that I was photographing, the noise level went to a zillion decibels and I was overrun with kids and parents with cameras. The sloth never moved. Later on during our travels, we had a driver who had sloths on his family’s farm. Some adorable ‘baby’ photos from him: Eduardo and baby sloth Eduardo and baby sloth Extricating myself from the gaggle of kids in the sloth house, I wandered into the butterfly house. As I entered, something an old South Carolinian auntie would always exclaim filled my brain: My Stahhs! BLUE MORPHO BUTTERFLY More info here. In the butterfly house, blue morpho butterflies were everywhere, in all stages. The complete butterfly cycle was represented: flowers for nectaring, host plants with eggs, all stages of instars, decimated plants eaten by the instars; pupae, chrysalis and adults. Spent a lot of time amazed at the efficiency of nature. Adult male blue morpho butterfly (once again, that ‘blue’ thing.) It’s wings aren’t actually blue. It is created by color refracting scales on the wings. In fact, the wings have no coloring at all. Viewed under a microscope, a blue morpho butterfly's wings are made up of diamond-shaped scales. Beautiful, big and shiny blue! The female morpho, on the other hand, has absolutely NO blue. See below: Black, brown and yellow female morpho butterflies feeding on fresh fruit. When mating, the female will drag the male around on its back until the deed is accomplished. Closed wing of male blue morpho is camoflaged as tree bark. Male morphos were flying everywhere and very hard to capture with the camera. My favorite photo: butterfly poop! Unidentified butterfly center left on the pentas. Can anyone identify it? Mystery butterfly The nectaring flowers were primarily pentas and bougainvillea. Pentas (5 petaled flower shown in white above) come in every color — except blue. There is one lavender strain. Pentas is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. The genus is found in tropical and southern Africa, the Comoros, Madagascar, and the Arabian Peninsula.The plants have hairy green leaves and clusters of flowers in shades of red, white, pink, and purple. I find them as greenhouse starts in the summer here in Dallas. Hummingbirds also nectar from them. Wikipedia A favorite unidentified food source for morpho instars Large canopy of Bougainvillea, another nectaring favorite, in butterfly house, La Paz Hope you can read Spanish! If not, see Wikipedia link below. Bougainvillea brought to Brazil in the 18th century from France by seaman/navigator Louis de Bouganville. Bougainvillea Veranera Bougainvillea is a genus of thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees belonging to the four o'clock family, Nyctaginaceae. It is native to eastern South America, found from Brazil, west to Peru, and south to southern Argentina. Different authors accept from 4 to 22 species in the genus. Wikipedia “Captured” seeds from a host plant A calculated guess: possible instar silk? See lower right of photo. The longer I stayed in the butterfly house, the more I was amazed. A blue morpho landing on the hat of an unsuspecting visitor admiring/photographing the camoflaged b’flies on the bench. On to the HUMMINGBIRD sanctuary… Not sure what this flower is. The hummers went crazy over it! Was so enthralled by the birds, I forgot to ask questions. I’m pretty sure this is a violet sabrewing hummer Me in a close encounter with a very large unidentified hummingbird. The wings appear to be transparent! Strong breeze created by those wings! unknown bird Flash of a white tail and coppery underwing feathers. Don’t know which bird it is. No matter how I tried, I cannot get this image to “embiggen”. Thank yous to DHM and ninkasi23 for sending your directions. Not sure why I can’t get them to work. A bougainvillea-canopied tree in hummingbird sanctuary Took a long time to identify this hummer. It is a FEMALE white-necked Jacobin (Florisuga mellivora). The male is blue. Golden-bellied fly catcher is an endemic resident breeder Costa Rica LAST STOP Mischievous White face Capuchin monkeys white face Capuchin monkey Hope you enjoyed this info-packed story about Costa Rica! Next week: Santa Elena/Monte Verde orchids; coffee-cacao-sugar cane growing+processing! Palm groves. Quepos beach/sunsets/wild monkeys. And last but not least, Golfito/Rio Claro. Please join us next Saturday for the second half of this crazy story. Flowers bloom in the footsteps of friends! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/11/2141258/-Saturday-Morning-Garden-Blog-Vol-19-6-Part-1-Costa-Rica-Flowers-Birds-Butterflies-Animals Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/