By Victoria Torley

The rainy season. We get plenty of rain year-round near our end of Lake Arenal. We have a few – but only a few – deciduous trees here. They drop their leaves, burst into flower, then re-leaf. 

Down on the Guanacaste coast, in fact, just over the mountains from Tilarán and toward Cañas, there is a completely different type of forest. Truth be told, our little country of Costa Rica is home to six different types of forests.

Up here, by the northwest corner of the lake, we have a lowland tropical rainforest; ‘lowland’ because we are below 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) in elevation. We also have high rainfall (sometimes we wish otherwise because 200+ inches is a lot of rain) and warm temperatures all year long. In the last seven years, we hit 59 F once and 96 F a few times. Mostly, though, we are in the 70-80 range.

Trees in the lowland tropical forest can be 100 feet tall or more, but trees that tall usually occur every few acres. They tower over the usual forest canopy and are called ‘emergent trees’ because they... well they ‘emerge’ over everything else. We have one such tree on the property, about 100 feet tall and it really does tower over the other trees.

Our type of forest has a huge variety of life because it has a layered ecosystem, micro-climates in the folds of the mountains and habitats and food year-round. Howler monkeys love it because there is always something to eat. We also get the occasional puma and other medium and large cats and lots of smaller animals. The blue morpho butterflies? They love it here.

The tropical rainforests of Costa Rica are found in the southwest of the country and differ from the upland rainforests mainly in heat. Go down to the Osa Peninsula, for example, and enjoy the sauna. Like the upland rainforests, these forests get that 200+ inches and more of rainfall annually. 

The trees in tropical rainforests can reach 200 feet and the canopy trees block the sun often limiting vegetation at ground level. As in the upland rainforest, the lowland forest is home to a wide variety of mammals, birds, and insects (pack off) and, where rivers meet the sea, crocodiles. Fortunately, the latter is absent from our local tropical rainforests at Lake Arenal.

Next week, more about our Costa Rican forests.

Plant for the week. It seems I sometimes forget our aquatic or semi-aquatic plants, so, if you have a pond or even a boggy spot, here is the papyrus. Papyrus grows in full sun and loves having wet feet. In fact, they can grow up to eight feet tall. They will spread, so keep them dug or cut back. A great accent plant. No, I haven’t tried to make paper from mine yet, but maybe someday.

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For more information on this article of request for information about gardening, Ms. Victoria Torley, gardener columnist, can be reached at victoriatorley1@gmail.com