Mora is a genus of large trees in the subfamily Caesalpinioideae of the legume family Fabaceae. There are six species, all native to lowland rainforests in northern South America, southern Central America, the southern Caribbean islands, and Hispaniola.
Enterolobium cyclocarpum, commonly known as conacaste, guanacaste, caro caro, devil's ear tree, monkey-ear tree, or elephant-ear tree, is a species of flowering tree in the family Fabaceae, that is native to tropical regions of the Americas, from central Mexico south to northern Brazil (Roraima) and Venezuela. It is known for its large proportions, expansive, often spherical crown, and curiously shaped seedpods. The abundance of this tree, especially in Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, where it is prized for the shady relief it provides from the intense sun, coupled with its immensity, have made it a widely recognized species. It is the national tree of Costa Rica.
The Baird's tapir, also known as the Central American tapir, is a species of tapir native to Mexico, Central America, and northwestern South America. It is the largest of the three species of tapir native to the Americas, as well as the largest native land mammal in both Central and South America.
Daniel Hunt Janzen is an American evolutionary ecologist and conservationist. He divides his time between his professorship in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology, and his research and field work in Costa Rica.
Selenicereus undatus, the white-fleshed pitahaya, is a species of the genus Selenicereus in the family Cactaceae and is the most cultivated species in the genus. It is used both as an ornamental vine and as a fruit crop – the pitahaya or dragon fruit.
The great green macaw, also known as Buffon's macaw or the great military macaw, is a critically endangered Central and South America parrot found in Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador. Two allopatric subspecies are recognized; the nominate subspecies, Ara ambiguus ssp. ambiguus, occurs from Honduras to Colombia, while Ara ambiguus ssp. guayaquilensis appears to be endemic to remnants of dry forests on the southern Pacific coast of Ecuador. The nominate subspecies lives in the canopy of wet tropical forests and in Costa Rica is usually associated with the almendro tree, Dipteryx oleifera.
Fraxinus profunda, the pumpkin ash, is a species of ash (Fraxinus) native to eastern North America, where it has a scattered distribution on the Atlantic coastal plain and interior lowland river valleys from the Lake Erie basin in Ontario and New York west to Illinois, southwest to Missouri and southeast to northern Florida. It grows in bottomland habitats, such as swamps, floodplains and riverbanks. It is threatened by the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect which has caused widespread destruction of ash trees in eastern North America.
Aglaia grandis is a species of plant in the Mahogany Family (Meliaceae). It is found in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its once-pinnate leaves are up to 6ft. 7in in length, with individual leaflets up to 23 inches long by seven inches wide.. This is the largest once-pinnate leaf of any hardwood (Dicot) tree. The tree can reach a height of up to eighty-eight feet.
Prosopis strombulifera is a species of mesquite or algarrobo, a shrub in the legume family. It is known by the English common names Argentine screwbean and creeping screwbean and the Spanish common name retortuño. This shrub is native to Argentina, where it grows in arid and saline soils. It became well known in California after it was introduced to Imperial County and took hold in the wild, growing as an invasive noxious weed. The plant grows from a network of long, spreading roots and may grow to three meters in height. Many plants may grow together in an area, forming a monotypic stand. The shrub has waxy-textured leaves made up of a pair of leaflets which are each divided into several pairs of secondary leaflets each up to a centimeter long. Whitish spines up to 2 cm long appear near the leaf bases. The inflorescence is a spherical head of many very narrow tubelike yellow flowers, the head measuring about 1.5 cm wide. The fruit is a bright yellow seed pod coiled tightly into a cylindrical stick up to 5 cm long. It contains several greenish seeds, each about 0.5 cm long.
Cassia grandis, one of several species called pink shower tree, and known as carao in Spanish, is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to the neotropics, that grows up to 30 m (98 ft). The species is distributed from southern México, to Venezuela and Ecuador. It grows in forests and open fields at lower elevations, and is known to be planted as an ornamental. In at least Costa Rica, its pods are stewed into a molasses-like syrup, taken as a sweetener and for its nutritional and medicinal effects, called Jarabe de Carao.
Tortuguero National Park is a national park in the Limón Province of Costa Rica. It is situated within the Tortuguero Conservation Area of the northeastern part of the country. Despite its remote location, reachable only by airplane or boat, it is the third-most visited park in Costa Rica. The park has a large variety of biological diversity due to the existence within the reserve of eleven different habitats, including rainforest, mangrove forests, swamps, beaches, and lagoons. Located in a tropical climate, it is very humid, and receives up to 250 inches (6,400 mm) of rain a year.
Pentaclethra macroloba is a large and common leguminous tree in the genus Pentaclethra native to the wet tropical areas of the northern Neotropics, which can form monocultural stands in some seasonally flooded habitats. It has giant, bipinnate leaves shaped like feathers. It uses seed dispersal by water to establish itself in new areas, having floating seeds that are left behind after the waters recede after floods or tides. It has hard timber which is not very resistant to rot in the tropics, but it can be treated, has a pretty pink-red colour when dry, and has a number of uses. Oil used in cosmetics is extracted from the large seeds. In the northern Amazon region the bark is used in herbal medicine as an antivenom, and in the Guianas the bark has been used as a fish poison. Despite their toxicity, the seeds are eaten by variegated squirrels, parrots and macaws, and serve as the nurseries of the larvae of the moth Carmenta surinamensis.
Winifred Hallwachs is an American tropical ecologist who helped to establish and expand northwestern Costa Rica's Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG). The work of Hallwachs and her husband Daniel Janzen at ACG is considered an exemplar of inclusive conservation.
Chisocheton lasiocarpus is a species of tree in the genus Chisocheton of the Mahogany Family (Meliaceae). It is a sparsely branched, slightly buttressed, somewhat stout mesocaul or rather slender pachycaul tree of the western New Guinea rainforest rising to 110 feet in height, and possibly the only such tree with a weeping habit, the huge terminal rosettes of five foot long pinnate leaves of the lower branches facing down toward the earth. Like all Chisochetons, C. lasiocarpus has indeterminate leaves with a tiny circinate bud at the tip of each leaf which produces a new pair of leaflets every few weeks or months over a period of several years, each leaf eventually reaching five feet in length. There are 9 to 11 pairs of leaflets at a time. Each leaflet can be up to 18 inches long by up to nine inches in width. The flowers are white or pink, tubular, about a half inch long with 4 or 5 petals and 7 or 8 stamens. The tree is "myrmecophilous". C. lasiocarpus is a highly variable species.
Chisocheton macrophyllus in the Mahogany family (Meliaceae) is a pachycaul rainforest tree of the East Indies and Malay Peninsula with very few upright limbs (reiterations) ultimately reaching a height of 115 feet. Each reiteration is topped by a tight rosette of once-pinnate leaves up to ten feet in length with up to 28 pairs of leaflets at any given time, each up to 15.5 inches long by 4.5 inches in width. Like all Chisocheton species, these leaves are indeterminate, forming a new pair of leaflets every few weeks or months. while the oldest pair may die. The cream-colored flowers, 1.5 inches long with 4 or 5 petals, are arranged in a thyrse up to 32 inches long, followed by pyriform capsules up to six inches in diameter with 2 to 4 seeds each the size and shape of a brazilnut.
Chisocheton polyandrus, of the mahogany family (Meliaceae), is a species of pachycaulous, unbranched trees variously called "palmoids", "maypole trees" or "Corner model trees" occurring among several families of unrelated trees.
Dipteryx oleifera, the eboe, choibá, Tonka Bean or almendro, is a species of emergent rainforest tree up to 165 feet tall in the family Fabaceae, native to Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador.
Lomariocycas aurata is a tree fern in the family Blechnaceae and found in montane rainforests and cloud forests from Costa Rica to Bolivia. The trunk, about six inches thick, stands up to 6.5 feet in height. The once-pinnate fronds are about a meter long.
