America’s Tropical Rainforest
March 10th, 2015
Quiz question: Where is the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. Forest Service? (Hint: It’s not Hawaii.)
The fern-covered floor of El Yunque Tropical Rainforest.
If you guessed Puerto Rico, you get an A+ in both ecology and geography. (Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States.)
And if you know the exact place is the El Yunque National Forest, you’re ready for Jeopardy.
I got to see El Yunque (pronounced YOON-kay) last month on a Caribbean cruise excursion, and it was my first look at a real tropical rainforest.
El Yunque was a little different from what I expected from watching Amazon-jungle documentaries. I saw no swinging monkeys, no murky rivers with deadly piranhas, and no football-sized tarantulas.
Surprisingly, El Yunque felt somewhat similar to Pennsylvania woods, except that the trees were palms, breadfruits and tree ferns instead of oaks and locust, and the vegetation was noticeably bigger and denser due to some 200 inches of rain per year and year-round mid-70-degree temperatures. That sounds like Heaven if you’re a plant.
For a plant-lover, the most striking feature is that many of the native plants growing out of this tropical volcanic soil are what we know as “houseplants.”
Tender ferns are common groundcovers. The philodendrons we grow out of hanging indoor baskets grow into big bushes and wind their way up tree trunks. And the same palms we grow in a living-room pot turn into 40- to 50- forest trees there.
Like most tropical rainforests, El Yunque is rich in diversity. Its 28,000 acres contain at least 1,000 different plant species and 240 varieties of trees – not to mention hundreds of small animal species and birds, such as falcons and redtail hawks.
Some species are extremely rare and endangered, which the Forest Service protects by keeping those areas off limits.
The Puerto Rican parrot, for example, is found only in El Yunque. Twenty-three tree species are found only in this forest.
One informational sign at El Yunque that particularly grabbed my attention was the one pointing out that half of all plant species in the world are found in tropical rainforests.
The African tulip tree has red flowers at the branch tops… and a not-so-nice scent when they’re squeezed.
So many of them are oddities to us. I recognized very little of what I saw.
My favorite was the African tulip tree, which puts out frilly-edged, cup-shaped clusters of red flowers at the very top of its canopy.
An interesting feature of the plant is that it has little sacs at the base of the flowers with liquid that smells like urine when you squeeze them. As you might guess, it’s a popular custom of devilish Puerto Rican boys to go around squirting tulip-tree fluid on little Puerto Rican girls. No wonder the locals usually call this the “pee-pee tree.”
Also interesting was the weather vane tree, a maple-ish tree on steroids with large leaves that have white undersides. On windy days, the leaves turn inside out to make the tree look all white.
And if I had to pick a third favorite, I’d go with the breadfruit – a tree that has large, cut leaves and produces dense, melon-sized fruits that are used like potatoes.
The breadfruit tree produces potato-like fruits.
The U.S. Forest Service has managed El Yunque since 1903 and has actually doubled its size since 1916.
One benefit is the potential future use of plants, especially ones with unknown medicinal value. Quinine and cortisone are just two examples of valuable medicines that come from plants found only in tropical rainforests.
Who knows what someone will discover one of these days
In the meantime, El Yunque is a fascinating place to see just for its natural beauty, waterfalls, and plant and wildlife diversity.
P.S. There are no poisonous snakes or large dangerous animals there. Just occasional boa constrictors (which I didn’t see) and some very big snails that make our garden slugs look like trifling snackers.