Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve

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What an interesting hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve! I took too many great photos to share on this blog but will include a few that I think were really interesting.

We stopped to look at so many things that it took us over 3 hours to walk only two miles. We hiked on a trail to a beautiful waterfall. Nature is truly a wonder. 

I thought it was raining the entire morning, but it was essentially just the moisture dripping from overhead.

Approximately two miles from Santa Elena, it is actually a different world. There were many different types of vegetation and the climate in the cloud forest which is different than in Santa Elena. It was cooler.

The area receives more rain - typically about 2 1/2 to 3 m (8-10 feet) of rain per year! Compare that to the amount of annual precipitation in the Mojave Desert. We typically receive about only ten inches annually.  

In the cloud forest, there are numerous examples of epiphytes. Epiphytes grow on other living plants to survive.

They live on the nutrients gathered from the mist and the decaying matter within the canopy.

There was a storm within the last two months. Workers cleaned up the trails and threw the broken branches to the side. Within this short time, the forest has already started to regenerate using the fallen branches. See how the epiphytes are already using the decaying branch to make life?
 

The strangling fig tree was so interesting. It begins life as an epiphyte. A bird might drop a seed of the strangling fig tree into a crotch of a tree.

The seed germinates in the crotch. The roots begin to grow very quickly down the sides of the tree. The roots grow until they reach the ground and take root. Over many, many years, the strangling fig tree gets bigger and bigger until the host tree is not able to get the correct amount of sunlight or oxygen it needs to survive.

The host tree will eventually die. Then it will slowly rot and the strangling fig tree is now hollow. The roots have an incredibly wide and strong base. It uses the nutrients from the rotting tree to make itself healthy and strong. You can see the host tree is still alive and well inside this strangling fig tree.  

I expected all of the flowers, plants, and trees to be huge, which many of them were. However, I didn’t expect to see so many miniature flora and fauna. This tiny orchid was so beautiful through the powerful lens of our guide’s telescope. The second photo was taken through his telescope. The tiny, white specks on the third photo are little mushrooms.
 



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