Belated Arbor Day Celebration: The Mighty Buttress Root Tree.

We just returned from lush, pristine Costa Rica for our 10th wedding anniversary and I'll do a post of that with some pix soon. However, I missed one of my favorite holiday's while gone--Arbor Day and I wanted to touch on that in this post. For those outside the U.S., Arbor Day is a day in America when we honor trees, which are beings that I cherish and have deep connections with. So seeing how I came back from the rain forests that I love so well I thought I'd chose a tropical tree for this years Arbor Day honor. The only name I could find for this is the Buttress Root Tree (seen above):

They were my favorite tree during my two year stay in Cote D'Ivoire West Africa as I made my way through the rain forest trails there. So, to see it again in Costa Rica was like seeing an old friend again--and she really is old. These trees can be many, many years old. In Costa Rica the indigenous peoples' often use the large buttress roots as drums to announce their locations to one another during animal hunts or when wanting to pass on news of a dangerous animal ahead, etc.They grow in poor soil and so they need to the large buttresses to keep their sky-scraping trunk from falling over. The roots often intertwine with other buttress trees creating a network that forms a symbiotic relationship between all the trees. It's almost as though they are a family holding hands to withstand strong winds. The roots are often taller than most humans!! They are truly the great giants of the rain forests -- the silent sentinels of its mysteries. In Costa Rica they are sometimes called "Dragon's Blood" trees because their sap looks like blood seeping down the trunk.

LAST PHOTO: A picture I took during a hanging bridges tour in a rain forest in Costa Rica. Click to enlarge the picture and see if you can spot the bridge in the center of the jungle. Can you see the people walking on it?

~The Green Man has Spoken~