Of course, Costa Rica isn’t an island but, you would be surprised how many times people mistakenly call it one in posts and articles, perhaps confusing it’s name with Puerto Rico. I use the word Emerald mainly because of the lush greenness of the country. While other countries in Central and South America are losing their forests to development and industry at alarming speed, Costa Rica has been reforesting the country for decades.
Since 1970 over a quarter of the country has been designated as Government Protected Land. Much of the country was deforested back in the middle of the last century in a race to develop the agricultural potential of Costa Rica. At one point the forestation coverage in Costa Rica was less than 25%, but today has increased to over 60%. Much of this was achieved by two programs, one, whereby farmers were made a yearly payment to take farmland out of production and plant trees and the second to have the Energy and Environment Department supply free trees to landowners who wish to improve tree coverage on their property. The main goal of the program was ‘to get as close as possible to 70% forest cover,’ which corresponded to the amount of land believed to have ‘forest potential’.” [1]
I digress, the article I’m writing is about something completely different. If you’d like to read more about the re-greening of Costa Rica please have a look at this article from The Guardian.
My article is about the trees themselves, specifically deciduous trees. North America has four seasons while Costa Rica basically has only two, the dry season and the wet season sometimes referred to as summer and winter, sometimes as the high season and the green season. One of the things I have found remarkable about Costa Rica is that although the deciduous trees lose their leaves, not all trees lose their leaves at the same time, thus maintaining the beautiful green canopy in place. Autumn is also referred to as Fall in North America for one very good reason. That’s the time of the year where all the leaves fall from the trees. Costa Rica is in perpetual partial Fall.
I’ve only been here a year and a half and I have yet to learn the names of most of the trees but I have observed that there is always, at least one tree on my property, dropping and renewing their leaves.
The following photos are of one of my trees that I noticed this morning sprouting new growth while at the same time dropping it’s old leaves. This provided the impetus for me to write this article.
