New Tree Book and Field Guide for Panama

Here’s the book I wish I had seven years ago when I tried to identify my first tree in Panama.

It would have saved a lot of time.

But it wasn’t published until this year. I just got my own copy, and I’m devouring it.

The title is Trees of Panama and Costa Rica (Princeton Field Guides) . The authors – Richard Condit, Rolando Pérez, and Nefertaris Daguerre – know the value of good field guides. Condit grew up in North America and was accustomed to field guides like those developed by Roger Tory Peterson. Pérez and Dagure grew up in Panama without such field guides. They all believe that a series of good field guides will help “budding botanists and ecologists” become familiar with the plants near their homes and in the woods where they walk.

[Right away I knew these were people after my own heart. I still remember identifying, as a youngster, my first bird using a Peterson Guide. It was an Eastern Meadowlark. The satisfaction of matching the bird to the description was inmeasureable, and I still have a warm feeling whenever I see that meadowlark.]

2300 Tree Species

A neat question raised by the authors was: which of the following common trees found in the US and Canada are found in the tropics?

• maple
• beech
• hickory
• fir
• redwood

Answer: none of them. Not found at all in the tropics.

What, then, are the major groups of trees found in the tropics?

Major tropical families are

• mahogany (Meliaceae)
• coffee (Rubiaceae)
• legumes (Fabaceae)

No wonder it’s so hard for a novice to identify trees in Panama without a field guide. The authors point out that we have about 2300 species of trees, compared to about 1000 in all of North America. It can even be hard for botanists:

“We have carried out inventories for 20 years throughout Panama, yet we are still unable to identify every tree we see. In fact, in more remote areas that are difficult to visit, it is typical for tropical botanists to leave as unidentified 25% of the species encountered. There is nowhere in North America where an experienced botanist would have anywhere near this difficulty.” (p. 11)

So, how does one go about learning 2300 trees?

Short answer: most of us don’t. Even if we learned all the trees in this book, we’d then know a mere 493 species. But it would be a long and laborious process to study a tree and then try to eliminate 492 possible identifications. Each time we wanted to learn a tree!

Fortunately, every tree we see has relatives, and if we can learn which Family the tree belongs to, then identification becomes greatly simplified.

429 Species in the Book; 83 Families; 25 Common Families

Trees of Panama and Costa Rica, like many good botany books, groups the 429 species it covers into 83 plant Families. That in itself helps us narrow down the traits that we must look for initially.

The authors introduce us to six leaf characteristics that, together, take us a long way toward recognizing a tree. “Much as a good bird-watcher first checks for the bill size of an unidentified bird, these are the traits you first check when examining an unknown tree…..”

The six features you need to learn for these families are:

1. opposite vs. alternate leaves
2. simple vs. compound leaves
3. toothed or lobed edges to the leaves
4. latex
5. clustered vs. regular spacing of leaves
6. stipules

Each of these features are clearly defined and explained in the introductory portion of the book, so you’ll quickly understand just exactly what to look for.

14 Memorizable Families

A simple table in chapter 2 (which I have copied out onto a spreadsheet of my own and now carry in my pocket) summarizes these traits for 25 of the most common families. You’ll see instantly in the table that only six common families exhibit the combination of opposite and simple leaves! Further, only seven common families have the combination of alternate and compound leaves. And only one common family has the combination of opposite and compound leaves. That’s 14 families with extremely simple combinations of traits, easy to memorize.

So, not only have Condit et al., chosen the tree families we’re most likely to encounter in Panama and Costa Rica, but they’ve pointed the way toward 14 families whose traits are easy to memorize and whose species are easy to learn. What a great way to start learning trees in the tropics – memorize the characteristics of these common families and you’re off!

After the authors have persuaded you that identifying tropical trees may not be so difficult, after all, they let you know how carried away you can become:

“If you spend any time at all trying to identify tropical trees, you will get to know these six major traits and their terminology well, and you will be noting each in every species you see. Soon, you will be counting leaflets and breaking off leaves to look for latex in ornamental plants at shopping malls.” (p. 22)

As may be obvious from the two previous quotes I’ve lifted from the book, the writing is accessible and dotted with surprising humor. I could throw in quite a few more gems, but I’ll end with one from a description of a member of the Achariaceae family (formerly Flacourtiaceae), Lindackeria laurina (carbonero):

“A small or medium-sized tree of forest edge in drier areas. When mature, the trunk has many stilts at the base. Leaves are large and wide, rounded at the base, and bunched toward branch ends. They hang downward at a sharp angel to the long upright petioles. Most distinctive is what happens when a leaf is crumpled: white lines immediately appear at all the folds….” (p. 28)

Doesn’t it just make you want to go out and crumple leaves?

The other books I’ve mentioned from time to time on this blog, especially one by Zuchowski and one by Gentry, are extremely useful and have made the difference between my staying completely ignorant of Panamanian plants and my becoming familiar with and appreciative of many plants in our area. But Trees of Panama and Costa Rica now becomes my first go-to book when I see a tree I don’t know.

Related articles

• A Tree Hugger, With a Twist (nytimes.com)
• Panama’s El Valle de Anton – Where Trees Are Square (odditycentral.com)
• Panama Analysis Institute Dedicated to Earth’s Ecosystem (socyberty.com)