Begonia decandra Pav. ex A.DC. in El Yunque National Forest

 This Begonia is endemic of Puerto Rico.  It can be seen in roadsides and places where the forest canopy borders and open sunny area. 

I found some tiny orchid seedlings, maybe of Leochilus puertoricensis, "in situ" in a single thin branch

Today I took some photos of the flowers of Leochilus puertoricensis and uploaded them to the Internet.  I was asked to take photos of the whole plant.  I went to see the plants and moved around the tree to try to get a better angle for the photos.  Then I noticed tiny green slivers on one of the branches.  They turned out to be orchid seedling.  I have never seen so many orchid seedling or such tiny ones.  Most were only green blades.  A single one had a short root.  My suspicion is that they are seedling of Leochilus, since they are in the same tree with plants of this species.  However I have never seen so many Leochilus plants clumped together, usually they occur as solitary plants.  I suspect the reason there are so many of them there is that it is the dry season and slugs and snails, which love to snack on these things are not very active due to the low humidity.  I will watch these tiny plants to see how many of them survive and how long they take to reach maturity and bloom.

Epidendrum lacerum Lindley 1838, it is always a treat to see species from Cuba.

In Puerto Rico, the orchid market is dominated by hybrids due to their availability and relative ease of cultivation in comparison with orchid species.  However there is a small number of growers that cultivate mostly species.  Finding Cuban orchid species in cultivation is not common so it is always a pleasure to find one in bloom.  This is a species from Cuba, it is related to Epidendrum secundum but the flowers are different and they are also oriented differently in the inflorescence.

Leochilus puertoricensis M.W. Chase 1986, today I found three plants in the trees around my garden

This small orchid can be found sporadically growing on the Camasey trees that surround my garden.  They are short lived for an orchid.  In last year dry season, all the plants I knew died, some young plants were unable to survive the unusual severity of the dry season, other had already bloomed and fruited and were larger but this didn't seem to help them.  Today I found three plants, I will monitor them to see how they fare in the coming year.

Anolis gundlachi, the yellow chinned anolis in El Yunque forest, Puerto Rico

I saw this Anolis in el Yunque forest.  The anolis was in a shady area under the canopy.  It kept moving away and hiding which didn't make taking his photos any easier.

Vanilla poitaei Rchb. f. 1877 "in situ",

This orchid is endemic of the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles.    In Puerto Rico this orchid is not particularly rare, however few local people, and this includes most orchid growers, are familiar with this plant and its flowers.    I have seen this plant hanging from trees near roads and snaking through the ground in sharp slopes but only very rarely have seen inflorescences and until now, I had never seen the flowers.

A few years back I located a large plant of this species growing in the trees close to the edge of a wetland.  A careful examination of the stems proved highly disappointing, as I could not locate evidence that it had ever bloomed.  The plant is enormous, a real giant, some stems measure tens of feet and descend all the way to the ground from the canopy.   Other stems are draped over bushes and small trees a few are growing directly on the ground but are attempting to climb back into the trees.

I kept returning to the plant each summer to see if it had bloomed.   Last year, to my chagrin, I found that I had completely missed the blooming season, which happens in July.  This year I almost missed it too but in this case because I was on vacation, away from the forest, during the peak of the blooming.

Although the plant, or plants, it is hard to tell given the way the stems are tangled, is quite large, it only blooms in the section of the plant that is facing an opening of the canopy in the direction of the edge of the wetland.   The plant produced about ten inflorescences in this small section and none at all in all the stems that were in the deep shade.    The flowers are ephemeral and last in perfection a single day.  I found a developing seed capsule in one of the inflorescences, none in the others, but there are still a few that have not yet bloomed so there is the possibility the plant will produce additional capsules.

I will keep visiting this plant to see if I can take photos of other flowers and to check how many seed capsules it produces by the end of the blooming season.

Psychilis monensis, an orange yellow form of this variable species, photographed "in situ" very deep into the interior of Mona Island.

This orchid is locally common, and sometimes downright abundant in certain parts of Mona Island.  This species produces flowers that can vary in color and markings between different plants.   This particular plant has orange yellow floral segments framing a richly colored lip.

Anolis cristatellus, in the RIo Abajo forest, Puerto Rico

Psychilis kraenzlinii (Bello) Sauleda 1988, from the north coast of Puerto Rico

This is Psychilis x raganii, sometimes shown as Psy. kraenzlinii Note the different coloring

These are the first flowers of Psychilis kraenzlinii I have been able to see in its native habitat.  These flowers are from the north coast, near the town of Isabela in Puerto Rico.   It is not easy to see these plants in the wild, the habitat they favor, near the coast, is also a favorite of humans, which means where there were strand of native vegetation there are now vacation homes near the beach.  Also people will collect these plants from the wild, which means that if you are in a place where humans have easy access the probability of seeing these plants in the wild is essentially nil.

I had seen these plants previously in orchid shows but never in their natural haunts.  Unfortunately these plants almost always die in captivity, due to the lack of knowledge of their cultural needs buy the people that collected them.  Paradoxically, all the ones I have seen that survived in captivity where in the hands of people that just tied them to a tree and essentially ignored them. 

There are exceptions to this rule as I have seen one or two large specimen plants in local exhibitions.  However I have been unable to talk with the owners of the large plants, so perhaps they way they cultivated the plants was to give them careful neglect.  

Psychilis kraenzlinii is sometimes confused with Psy. x raganii.  The two orchids are similar, their main difference is their color and in technical details of the callus of the lip.  Psy, raganii has a reddish color as you can see in the photo.

Liparis saundersiana Rchb. f. a terrestrial orchid from Puerto Rico

In many years visiting the Maricao Forest I had never encountered this species.  Then in December of 2014, as I was looking at a plant of Epidendrum anceps, I noticed that there were several plants of this species a few feet away.  I could have easily missed the plants had I not looked at the right place, they are small and inconspicuous, a rosette of a few leaves flush with the leaf litter.    But once I had noticed the plants, I saw them at several places.  The plants must be deciduous since I have examined the places where they are growing many times and would have noticed them if they had been present.

For some reason all the plants I found were growing among fearsomely thorny plants and reaching them to take a photo was not that easy.  The largest group of plants was nested among a clump of Pitcairnia bromeliads.  A few plants here and there were under some thorny vines.  As I stepped in to take a photo a large thorn stabbed me on the foot through the shoe.  It was very painful.  The sacrifices one makes to get a photo!

All the plants I saw were producing seed pods and seemed in good health.  The plants are quite safe in their habitat as it is unlikely anyone will collect them and they live in a protected area.     Next year when I visit them I will wear thorn resistant clothes and footwear!

Anolis evermanni Stejneger 1904, in the forest of Rio Abajo

Today I was cleaning the patio and decided to remove an accumulation of sticks and leaves that had developed under a clump of palm stems.  When I did this, I broke several tunnels that termites had made into the leaf litter mass.  As a result worker termites were exposed, as well as a few warriors.  This is not an unusual event so I continued cleaning.  Then I noticed that an Anolis evermanni was eating the worker termites.  Anolis evermanni are normally an even green color.  This one had an overlay of darer green bands.  I attribute this to the excitement caused by the presence of an abundance of prey.  Anolis evermanni has shown a breathtaking amount of behavioral flexibility in the laboratory.  From what I saw while taking the photos, this particular lizard regarded me as an annoyance, but also as essentially harmless.  That's why I could get so close to it.  These lizard see me daily as I do garden chores or just walk around.  This might explain the boldness of this one, or maybe it was very, very hungry.  Anolis only eat the workers, the warriors have dark pointy heads full of a distasteful toxic glue that the lizards seem to loathe.

A baby puertorican boa startles and delights

This baby Puertorican boa surprised, startled and delighted the personnel of the Puertorican Parrot project by spending the day wrapped around the rails of one of the paths in the aviary.  It was quite festy and would try to bite if someone got too close.  It provided me with a rare occasion to use my 100mm macro lens on an animal.  After I took a number of photos gently but firmly, I coaxed the snake to leave the rail and to move to the vegetation.  The little snake eventually slithered down the rail and moved away.  I did this at night fall so that it would not fall prey to daytime predators.

Anolis cristatellus, displaying its dewlap

Compared to most other lizards I see locally, this male Anolis cristatellus has been surprisingly bold.  Instead of running away up the tree or hiding on the opposite side of the trunk, this lizard has held its ground calmly but alertly.  It had allowed me to get very close to him.  On ocassion it has showed its dewlap, this is a territorial display in this species.  Today I was able to get images of the lizard showing its dewlap.

Anolis cristatellus cristatellus Duméril and Bibron, 1837, that just had been involved in a territorial fight

This adult male cristatellus was just involved in a territorial fight.  The snout shows damage and the lower mandible is slightly bloody.  These lizards engage in territorial fights with neighboring males.  Sometimes, when they fight, they make hissing noises.  The fights usually happen in branches or trunks of trees or bushes.  In those fights that I have witnessed the loser is the one that falls from the trun or branch.

Gesneria cuneifolia (DC.) Fritsch, yerba parrera, a gesneriad endemic of Puerto Rico, seen at the Rio Abajo forest.

When I hike in the forest of Rio Abajo, I always take the camera with me, because every time I find something new and interesting to photograph.  This gesneriad is endemic of Puerto Rico.  It grows litophytically on the limestone rocks in the forest of Rio Abajo.  Its distribution is patchy, you can walk a long time without seen a single plant and then find a boulder or a road cut filled with them.  It is pollinized by hummingbirds.