Friday, October 30, 2009

October Berries in the Forest

There are so many fruits and berries now peppering light and color in the forest.
Taxonomy experts, Agustin Contreras of Ark Herb Farm and Orlando Vargas of Organization for Tropical Studies – OTS-, helped us to identify the following trio, which had me stumped:

Chiococca alba F. Rubiaceae – Zorrillo or Snowberry









Here’s Another Rubiaceae, probably a Palicouria. Berries leave a bright purple dye on your fingers that won’t wash off easily.











Witheringia solanacea F. Solanaceae.

Usually found at higher elevations, common in Monteverde. We found this volunteer at aprox. 900M altitude down the mountain at Tigre Hill.





We’re still not sure what this is. Stay posted!






Right now, I’m in another sort of Jungle called the Big Easy. WhoDat Saints still undefeated - playing Atlanta on Monday here at the totally renovated Superdome. It's just crazy in this town right now! Can you blame me for finding solace in pictures of berries back in Costa Rica? Here’s a shot from the Krewe du Boo parade last Saturday.


Just a prelude of what’s to come tomorrow. I just hope they don’t smash the front door like they did Halloween night two years ago.

Nov.1st: Frontdoor survived halloween but elevator out of order. Somebody squeezed in one too many ... so now we have to climb four flights of stairs up to the flat, building an appetite for breakfast.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

perhaps you could find solace riding on the float in next years parade...it's quite a ride and the throws share the generous and loving spirit of the city - Hope you had fun!
Sincerly,
the girl in the pic

Maguil C. said...

Dear Finca El Tigre.

I just came across this site searching for some plant pictures (Forgive my poor English skills) and I found this site. I believe that idea was to inform the public local or overseas with botanical information that maight be of their interest in a very educative way.

Unfortunately here I found published a common English name that dosen´t exist for Zorrillo and I have a heavy need to comment on this mater because have been a kind of harmful practice base on the idea that we need to link people with words they can understand or be familiar with.


People should stop creating english names for animals or plants that not one know. Particularly the translatio of a scientic name an use it as a common one or equivalent some how feels like rewriting the value of the scientific name istead of learn some latin or some spanish and the meaning of it in our own language ( The English name post is a translation of the scientific name).

Ethnobotany suffer with this type of practice that deprive those in search for knowledge over a given cultural group and the reasons for which they named a given animal, plant, place or river with a particular name. Simply local names are connected to the core of identity and should be respect, preserve and promote instead of recreated at our on teast

As a botanist interested int he value and exportation of common names that we should steak to this parameters: Some given names are for identification ( the scientific) and some are to link a given plant, animal or place with those that coin the name and identify the plant in first place. Finally we share one world plants can help us to understand that .
Thanks and again forgive my English but try to respect the original language use in this blog.


Yours Kindly Maguil Céspedes Castro