Most of this land suffered deforestation but as the land became once more protected this is quite successfully being reversed. Trees in mangroves grow in distinct layers. On calm cloudy days excreted salt creates a mist around the crowns of the treetops, making the leaves of the black mangrove appear white or grey.
The trees are full of sloths, monkeys, tamadua and other mammals with mud banks crawling with caimen, black river turtles and Jesus Christ lizards. Magical cloud forests Characterised by its humidity, cloud forests sit in the foggy mountainous highlands of Costa Rica, surrounding both active and dormant volcanic regions.
Recovering tropical dry forest In the lower elevations on the North Pacific coast in Guanacaste and the Nicoya Peninsula, less dense, tropical rainforests abound. Planning a trip to Costa Rica? Check out some of our very best deals! View Deal. See Itinerary. Best Hotels in Costa Rica. Hotel Tamarindo Diria Beach Resort. Check Price. Punta Islita, Autograph Collection. Hotel Boutique Lagarta Lodge.
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North Puntarenas. Vacation Packages. Around Beautiful Costa Rica. Costa Rica Eco-Adventure Tour. Eco Escape: A Sustainable Vacation. Javi the Frog's Newsletter. All rights reserved. Traveling to Costa Rica? Get the inside scoop on the best of places to go and things to see in Costa Rica in our free weekly newsletter. Enter Your Email. Where To Stay. As they die and decay, they form a compost on the branch capable of supporting larger plants which feed on the leaf mold and draw moisture by dangling their roots into the humid air.
Soon every available surface is a great hanging gallery of giant elkhorns and ferns, often reaching such weights that whole tree limbs are torn away and crash down to join the decaying litter on the forest floor. Wildlife The Babylonian gardens of the jungle ceiling--naturalist William Beebe called it an "undiscovered continent"--host a staggeringly complex, unseen world of wildlife that runs into millions of species.
In the canopy, forest trees flower and fruit in the steaming tropical sunshine. Scarlet macaws and lesser parrots plunge and sway in the high branches, announcing their playacting with an outburst of shrieks. Arboreal rodents leap and run along the branches, searching for nectar and insects, while insectivorous birds watch from their vantage points for any movement that will betray a stick insect or leaf-green tree frog to scoop up for lunch.
Legions of monkeys, sloths, and fruit- and leaf-eating mammals also live in the green world of the canopy, browsing and hunting, thieving and scavenging, breeding and dying.
Larger hunters are up there too. In addition to the great eagles plunging through the canopy to grab monkeys, there are also tree-dwelling cats. These superbly athletic climbers are quite capable of catching monkeys and squirrels as they leap from branch to branch and race up trunks. There are also snakes here. Not the great monsters so common in romantic fiction, which dangle, says David Attenborough, "optimistically from a branch, waiting to pick up a human passer-by," but much smaller creatures, some twig-thin, like the chunk-headed snake with catlike eyes, which feasts on frogs and lizards and nestling birds.
Come twilight, the forest soaks in a brief moment of silence. Slowly, the lisping of insects begins. There is a faint rustle as nocturnal rodents come out to forage in the ground litter. And the squabbling of fruit bats replaces that of the birds. All around, myriad beetles and moths take wing in the moist velvet blanket of the tropical night.
These pioneer land builders thrive at the interface of land and sea, forming a stabilizing tangle that fights tidal erosion and reclaims land from the water. The irrepressible, reddish-barked, shrubby mangroves rise from the dark water on interlocking stilt roots. Small brackish streams and labyrinthine creeks wind among them like snakes, sometimes interconnecting, sometimes petering out in narrow culs-de-sac, sometimes opening suddenly into broad lagoons.
A few clear channels may run through the rich and redolent world of the mangroves, but the trees grow so thickly over much of it that you cannot force even a small boat between them.
Mangroves are what botanists call halophytes, plants that thrive in salty conditions. Although they do not require salt they in fact grow better in fresh water , they thrive where no other tree can. Costa Rica's young rivers have short and violent courses which keep silt and volcanic ash churned up and suspended, so that a great deal of it is carried out of the mountains onto the coastal alluvial plains.
The nutrient-rich mud generates algae and other small organisms that form the base of the marine food chain. Food is delivered to the estuaries every day from both the sea and the land so those few plants--and creatures--that can survive here flourish in immense numbers. And their sustained health is vital to the health of other marine ecosystems. The nutrients the mangrove seeks lie not deep in the acid mud but on its surface, where they have been deposited by the tides.
There is no oxygen to be had in the mud either: estuarine mud is so fine-grained that air cannot diffuse through it, and the gases produced by the decomposition of the organic debris within it stay trapped until your footsteps release them, producing a strong whiff of rotten eggs the mud also clings so tenaciously it can suck the boots from your feet. Hence, there is no point in the mangroves sending down deep roots.
Instead, the mangroves send out peculiar aerial roots, like spider's legs, to form a horizontal platform that sits like a raft, maintaining a hold on the glutinous mud and giving the mangroves the appearance of walking on water. The mangroves draw oxygen from the air through small patches of spongy tissue on their bark.
Mangrove swamps are esteemed as nurseries of marinelife and as havens for water birds--cormorants, frigate birds, pelicans, herons, and egrets--which feed and nest here by the thousands, producing guano that makes the mangroves grow faster.
The big birds roost on the top canopy, while smaller ones settle for the underbrush. Frigate birds are particularly fond of mangrove bushes and congregate in vast numbers along the swampy shorelines of the Gulf of Nicoya see "Birds," below.
The bushes in which they build their nests rise some six to ten feet above the mudflats--just right to serve as launching pads. Mangrove swamps, especially those fed by freshwater streams, are marine nurseries of astonishing fertility. A look down into the water reveals luxuriant life: oysters and sponges attached to the roots, small stingrays flapping slowly over the bottom, and tiny fish in schools of tens of thousands.
Baby black-tipped sharks and other juvenile fish, too, spend much of their early lives among mangrove roots, out of the heavy surf, shielded by the root maze that keeps out large predators. High tide brings larger diners--big mangrove snappers and young barracudas hang motionless in the water.
Raccoons, snakes, and, as everywhere, insects and other arboreal creatures also inhabit the mangroves. There is even an arboreal mangrove tree crab Aratus pisonii which eats mangrove leaves and is restricted to the very crowns of the trees by the predatory activities of another arboreal crab, Goniopsis pulcra.
Mangroves are aggressive colonizers, thanks to one of nature's most remarkable seedlings. The heavy, fleshy mangrove seeds, shaped like plumb bobs, germinate while still on the tree. The flowers bloom for a few weeks in the spring and then fall off, making way for a fruit. A seedling shoot soon sprouts from each fruit and grows to a length of inches before dropping from the tree. Falling like darts, at low tide they will land in the mud and put down roots immediately.
Otherwise, the seedlings--great travelers--become floating scouts and outriders ahead of the advancing roots.
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