Page 306 - The Rough Guide to Panama (Travel Guide)

304 CONTEXTS Wildlife
Wildlife

One of Panama’s major attractions is its varied and abundant wildlife. For its
diminutive size – slightly larger than the Republic of Ireland, smaller than the
US state of South Carolina – Panama’s biodiversity and level of endemism is
astounding. Located at the barely touching fingertips of two continents, the
country hosts fauna from both land masses: deer and coyotes more readily
associated with temperate North America as well as jaguars and capybaras
from the tropical South, and a cornucopia of astounding marine life. The flora
is equally diverse: an estimated ten thousand vascular plant species grow on
the isthmus, predominantly in the country’s luxuriant tropical rainforests,
which cover an estimated 45 percent of the land.

Flora
Panama’s tropical wet forests, or rainforests, which by definition receive an annual
rainfall of more than 2m and can receive up to three times that amount on some of the
Caribbean slopes, are what most excite nature-lovers. Primary rainforests – original,
undisturbed growth – are highly prized for their greater biodiversity, comprising
seventy percent of the country’s forested area. In these complex ecosystems most animal
and plant activity occurs in the forest “roof” or canopy and the sub-canopy, where
dangling vines and lianas provide vital transport links. Poking out of the canopy, which
filters out more than ninety percent of the sunlight, are a sprinkling of robust emergent
trees, generally around 60–70m tall, able to withstand being buffeted by storms and
scorched by sunlight. Most easily recognized, and visible from a great distance, is the
ringed silvery grey trunk of the cuipo (cavanillesia platanifolia), which exhibits a bare
umbrella-like crown during the dry season; particularly abundant in the Darién, it is a
favourite nesting site of the harpy eagle. Equally distinctive from above is the lofty
guayacán (tabebuia guayacan), whose brilliant golden crown stands out against the
dense green canopy carpet, blooming a month in advance of the first rains. Not
atypically, both species drop their leaves in the dry season to reduce water loss through
evaporation. From the forest floor, the vast buttress roots of the ceiba (silk-cotton or
kapok tree; ceiba petandra), or thinner versions on the Panama tree (sterculia apetela),
are more striking; so, too, the vicious protective spines on the spiny cedar (pachira
quinata), or the swollen midsection of the aptly named barrigón (pseudobombax
septenatum) – barriga meaning “pot belly” in Spanish – which can double its waist size
to store water and whose pretty pompom flowers open for evening pollination.
Dominated by vines, ferns, saplings and shrubs typically 10–25m tall, the forest
understorey and forest floor below are relatively sparsely populated in the cathedral-like
primary forest, in contrast to the dense and tangled vegetation of secondary forest. It’s
in these lower layers that you’ll come across the pinkish hues of heliconias, such as the
vividly named lobster’s claw (heliconia rostrata), edged with yellow, and the more solid
beefsteak (heliconia mariae), a “medium-rare” dark pink, or the pouting scarlet bracts
of the Warholian hotlips (psychotria poeppigiana), which lure butterflies and
hummingbirds to the almost invisible central flowers.
Topping the higher mountainous ridges, especially in western Panama, and almost
permanently enveloped in mist, are dense patches of eerie fern-filled cloud forest,
characterized by shorter, stockier trees covered in lichen and dripping with mosses.
Boughs here are more heavily laden with epiphytes, including many of Panama’s

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