Yucatan forest
I
was drawn back into my Costa Rican
journals by a curiosity about which, if any, plants could be seen in
both Costa Rica and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It turns out
that most of the Yucatan Peninsula is covered with tropical dry forest,
a bit like Monteverde's Pacific
slope seasonal forest
(but even further on the dry side.)
Plants on the Yucatan
Peninsula are often water-stressed for two reasons. First of all,
in the driest part of the Yucatan (the northwest section, where Uxmal is located), the dry season
usually lasts for seven months, from October to May. Meanwhile,
the caves underlying the entire Peninsula allow rainwater to quickly
filter down beyond the reach of plant roots.
The
combination of factors means that many trees on the Yucatan peninsula
drop their leaves every year as a water conservation measure during the
long dry season. From a botanical standpoint, though, the
Yucatan's dry season is very different from our winter --- although the
leaves are gone, the trees often take advantage of the "winter" months
to flower and fruit.
The tropical dry forest
is also nothing like the rainforest you may picture when you think of
the tropics. Delete the lianas, epiphytes, and towering
trees from your mental image and replace them with short trees,
parasitic plants and a well developed understory. Many trees in
the tropical dry forest are spiney, and cacti are common --- in fact,
the Yucatan has 14 endemic cactus species (meaning that these species
can be found nowhere else in the world.)
From a plant's point of
view, the Yucatan peninsula is one big island. Of course, it is
surrounded on three sides by water, but the tropical wet forest on the
inland side forms just as effective a barrier to plant movement,
preventing dry-loving species from gaining a foothold there.
Scientists estimate that up to 10% of the plants found on the Yucatan
are endemic, making the area a botanist's paradise.
If, like me, you're just
trying to get a handle on what a typical Yucatan forest looks like, you
should learn the top species. The most common trees include Wild
Tamarind (Lysiloma
bahamensis --- perhaps this is the tree pictured above with the
fascinating hairy pods?), Jamaican Dogwood (Piscidia piscipula), Alvaradoa amorphoides, Gumbo
Limbo (Bursera simaruba), Cedrela mexicana, Chlorophora tinctoria, Cordia gerascanthus and Lonchocarpus rugosus. If it helps you make
sense of the jumble of scientific names, that list includes three
legumes.
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