A floating, aquatic fern, Azolla microphylla is in Palo Verde, but not very common. It seems to like open water habitats, since the only time I’ve seen it here was in open water, and it was very abundant at this lagoon.
Azolla microphylla
Tag Archives: Plants
Ludwigia
Guanacaste Tree
A vertical panorama. This tree is enormous, but I couldn’t find a tag from Oscar Rocha and Jim Hemrick’s genetic diversity and seed dispersal studies. I have exact GPS coordinates though… just in case.
Another Syrphid
| A Syrphid hover fly sits on an Echinodorus paniculatus flower. |  |
What is this?
I’ve seen this submergant in three different wetlands and it’s not in my book. What is it?
Nymphaea amazonum
Having a ring of hairs surrounding the end of the petiole distinquishes N. amazonum from another common water lily here, Nymphaea prolifera. Both commonly have purple specks on the upper surface of the leaves, and have entire, un-toothed, margins, unlike N. pulchella and N. ampla.
 |
 |
Nymphaea prolifera
| Common in the shallower, west fringes of the wetland, I hadn’t encountered more than N. amazonum and N. pulchella prior to this year at Palo Verde. There are at least four other lily species I’m missing that have been documented in the Tempisque basin according to Crow. |  |
Canopy
Catalina wetland
The wetland plant composition is slightly different in Catalina. Pistia seems to dominate many open water areas, rather than Eichhornia and there are large patches of Lemna (pictured below) in some parts. Of course, the dominate emergent is Typha, but there is some Thalia. The Typha seems much more dominate this year than last, but I’m not sure if the wetland is managed similar to the wetland in the Palo Verde sector. Margins of the wetland have lots of Parkinsonia.
Flowering Neptunia and Eichhornia
