Ipê Tree in bloom

And here's a closer look at that ipê tree (Tabebuia serratifolia) in bloom. This is the forest ipê, not to be confused with the many decorative species used in urban landscaping. There is another species of forest ipê called ipê roxo, the purple blooming variety. I have two of these trees planted at Bosque Santa Lúcia but they haven't reached the age of blooming yet. I can't wait!

Dust, Part III

While I was taking pictures of dust, a neighbor passed by in a small car at a very slow speed. He was being polite, but nevertheless, you can see dust flying. We could possibly go another 4-6 weeks without rain, so the situation is going to get worse before it rains. Notice the ipê tree (Tabebuia serratifolia) in the background. This is the time they lose their leaves and break into an explosion of yellow flowers.

Dust, Part II

In this image you can get an idea of the fine texture of the dust. It must be 2-3 inches thick in most places on the road. When large vehicles go over the road, even at moderate speeds, clouds of dust go up into the air and the winds can carry them for long distances. A high quality gravel would resolve this situation but that material isn't easy to come by and road overhauls consist of graders scrapping the surface smooth, as opposed to building up a roadbed.

Dust ... and more dust

And speaking of the dry season and dust, this is the dirt road passing through Bosque Santa Lúcia, as it was two days ago. From this point to BR-163, the Santarém-Cuiabá Highway, is 3 kilometers; to the Curuá-Una Highway it's 5 kilometers. The road used to be no more than a trail until they soybean industry got started 5 years ago. Now it serves as a connection between the 2 highways, especially for truck traffic, including logging vehicles. Now you may wonder why they would avoid a paved highway in favor of dust and/or mud. As you might conclude, there are probably some devious reasons for doing so. Since I can't prove it, I won't say anymore. The most traditional method of reducing dust among those living along the road is to build lombados (spring-breakers). I dare say that most drivers respect spring-breakers but there are some rebels who take pride in speeding over them, or destroying them. There's a spring-breaker in the attached image. Can you see it? Probably not because it's part of the dusty scenario. And then too, some perturbed tractor driver resolved to destroy part of it, maybe out of hate. Few people enjoy having to slow down for these things. He went a step further in knocking down the sign warning drivers of the lombado. Fear not amigo, my neighbor across the way will be building two more this coming week and has promised to fix this one up. Two years ago we counted 42 lombados on the 8 kilometers between the two highways! It's called survival.

Pau-brasil in the Amazon

This picture of a Pau-brasil at Bosque Santa Lucia was taken during the peak of dry season two years ago. As you can see, there's not one leaf on the tree, which was four-years old at that time. I had given it several liters of water every day but the summer was a mean one! Four months without any rain, 2 degrees below the equator is nothing to sneeze at, so to speak. But rain is God-sent and the tree bounced back very quickly after the first rain. So did everything else. My helper at the Bosque at that time, an old man of 72, said it. You can water plants day and night but only a rain can bring life back!

Pau-brasil and the bow-makers, Part VI

Illustration of bean pods on one of the variations of Pau-brasil, the Espirito Santos variation, if I'm not mistaken. The pods are still immature but you can see the thorns already developing. All of that beautiful heartwood is also protected by thorns from the bottom of the trunk to the outer branches. Image: Charles Espey.

Pau-brasil and the bow-makers, Part V

Attached is an image of the flowers of one of the Pau-brasil variations. They seem to be the same types of flowers I've seen on one of my trees at Bosque Santa Lucia. It puts on quite a show with its beautiful golden flowers and all the insects around them. Unfortunately, the flowers break off on the stems before they can produce the bean pod. I don't know why, maybe because the tree is still quite young. I planted it in August of 2000 from a small seedling. Most of the year it is a beautiful tree but this time of the year it suffers a lot for the lack of rain and the dust factor. Image: Charles Espey

Pau-brasil and the bow-makers, Part IV

If you do an internet search on "Pau-brasil", you come up with a list of different species of trees, all with that same common name. Try the scientific name, "Caesalpinia echinata". Most of the references will be the "true" Pau-brasil and you'll find a lot of update information on the history of the tree, history of bow-making, as well as what's going on today in reforestation and efforts to increase the supply and demand for the wood. In my correspondence with bow-maker, Charles Espey, I was surprised to learn that there are at several morphological variations of Caesalpinia echinata. Three are shown in the attached image of Pau-brasil leaves and I understand that the wood from all of them are used in the bow-making profession. Image: Charles Espey

Pau-brasil and the bow-makers, Part III

Charles Espey sent me a series of graphical maps showing the deforestation patterns in the Atlantic Forest from 1940 through 1990. The cutting of the forest started in the 1500s, but it's amazing how much of the forest has disappeared in just the last few decades. There is only about 5% of the old growth forest left! Not to be cynical, but the same thing happened in our country, a long time ago. Old growth forests in the United States are no more than pinpoints on the map today. Like the remaining pieces of the Atlantic Forest, there are people quite eager to cut down the rest. But that's another story; our interest here is, Pau-brasil (also called the Pernambuco tree) and the connection with the bow-makers. My curiosity of how Espey entered the profession got the best of me, so I came right out and asked him about it. I'm honored that he responded to my question. To quote him: "32 years old and doing graphic design and photography in Seattle, I was rowing my rowboat and ran into a piling. When I jumped forward to fend off I stepped on my fiddle case and cracked the instrument. In the shop I went to for repair there was a man making a bow... I got a job repairing bows and 9 months later moved to France and learned the trade there. The moral of the story is the texture of a person’s life is full of the threads of chance encounters, even painful events can thrust you into another world. I have a feeling you’ve grabbed a few threads yourself." Quite a story and so succinctly put. France, that's where the connection between Pau-brasil and the bow-makers started more than 200 years ago. F. Tourte was already the name among bow-makers in the world at that time. His mania for experimenting with every kind of wood he could find led him to a piece of Pau-brasil that he discovered on the outskirts of Paris on a fishing trip. That piece of wood proved far superior to any other wood species he had used previously; and the professional bow-makers of today continue to look at Pau-brasil as the standard. Now, you may wonder how Tourte came by a piece of Brazilian wood on the banks of a river near Paris. Quite simple. Millions of Pau-brasil logs were exported to Europe during the economic rage of red dye. That Smithsonian Institute magazine article (The Music Tree) that I referred to earlier, reports that Paris alone had a stockpile of more than 150 acres of Pau-brasil logs piled head high. I asked Charles Espey to send me some images of his bows. Notice that the one in the attached image carries his signature. Coming up, images of Pau-brasil plantations in Bahia.

Pau-brasil and the bow-makers, Part II

I'm always thrilled when I get feedback from readers. Imagine how excited I got when I received a comment from Charles Espey, a master bow-maker in the United States. He wasn't touting his fine bows because he's doesn't need any advertising in the musical world. His bows are world famous. He was merely commenting on a blog post that I had written about Pau-brasil, a tree we have at Bosque Santa Lucia. Charles Espey not only uses Pau-brasil for making his bows, he's instrumental in the reforestation of the species via fund raising projects here in Brazil. Once considered near extinct, Pau-brasil is making a comeback via the efforts of Espey and other bow-makers in Europe and North America. He tells me that as of this month, Pau-brasil has been included on the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Animals and Flora) Appendix 2, which means that the use of it will be much more regulated than in the past. The trees being planted now will be ready for harvest starting about 30 years from now. That's how long it takes for the heartwood to meet the rigid qualifications needed to make quality bows. I understand that most established bow-makers have a stock of Pau-brasil that will last them until that time. Since a finished bow weighs only two ounces, a cubic meter of the wood will last a long time. Image, courtesy of Charles Espey.

Pau-brasil and the bow-makers

In past blog posts I've written about Pau-brasil (Caesalpinia echinata), a Brazilian tree that provided most of the red dyes of the world for more than 300 years. It's estimated that more than 75 million trees were cut and shipped off to Europe between the 1500s-1800s. About the time synthetic dyes were discovered in the 1800s, not many Pau-brasil trees remained in the wild. Likewise, a big chunk of Brazil's Atlantic Forest had been altered, in part because of the cutting of Pau-brasil. The wood is very much in demand among bow makers of the world, who consider it the standard in their specialized profession. Since the French master bow-maker, F. Tourte, crafted his first bow of this wood 250 years ago, nothing has been been found to equal it in quality for resilience, density, beauty or the ability to hold a curve. Pau-brasil wood is still the standard and if you want a bow made if it, be prepared to pay the price, which can run into the thousand of dollars. I read in a Smithsonian magazine article (The Music Tree) that those bows made by Tourte and cohorts are all collectors items, some costing more than a hundred-thousand dollars. When I show off my own trees at Bosque Santa Lucia, I talk about the discovery of Pau-brasil by Portuguese explorer Cabral in 1500, and how Brazil came by its name. I also talk about the use of the wood for making quality bows and what the craftsmen are doing today to guarantee a stock of the wood for the future. Image: courtesy of Master Bow-maker, Charles Espey.

Thanks for the ride

Jungle Grammar — the Verb “To Be”

Slash, slash, slash
Wack, wack, wack
Cutting this jungle brush
is killing my back.

My machete worn down
to a kitchen knife
from wack, wack, wack
on its metallic life.

Slash, slash, slash
Working on this land, so fine
proves to me that everything
is, has been or will be a damned vine.


"Excerpts from my book, Santarém - Riverboat Town, A Gringo's Own Account of Tourism on the Brazilian Amazon and Tapajós Rivers.

Howler monkey skull continued

"My, what big eyes you have!" "The better to see you, my dear." Aren't those ocular orbits enormous? Small brain space but huge voice box and eyes. The teeth are pretty formidable too. They sure don't look like teeth designed for eating leaves, buds and fruit, but these things make up the diet of the howler monkey. Although the environment around Bosque Santa Lucia has been dramatically altered, there are still many howlers around. I hear them on almost any given day or night. Sometimes they visit the trees right around the reception center but they are quick to move away when they spot human beings.

Howler monkey

Howler monkey don't howl—they roar. To me the sound is that of a cross between a jet plane taking off and a bunch of noisy hogs, a sound you can hear from kilometers away. The anatomical feature that allows the howler monkey to communicate so adeptly is a very large voice box (hyoid bone), which you can see in the attached image. It's the cup-like bone to the right of the skull. Evidently males and females have this large voice box, but it's the male that does most of the yelling. I can't remember how I came by this skull and voice box but I think it was given to me by a rural family in the State of Amazonas.

Hamadryas butterfly

I've been trying to get a picture of a hamadryas butterfly for the last few days, but without success. They appear to be unperturbed by human presence, until you get close to them ... and off they go, often time coming back to the same location. More often than not, they are seen resting on the trunks of trees. I know when they are around because the male makes a very distinctive clicking sound. I read that the hamadryas are called "cracker" butterflies because of this sound. Today, I lucked out in getting an image of one. It had landed on one of the supportive timbers of the front porch and I got off one shot of it before it flew away. Surprising enough, it turned out to be in focus. Normally, I shoot a lot of pictures and then choose the best, which isn't always the best. Click on the attached image for a better view of our friend

Leafless cedar trees

In the foreground you can see cedar trees (Cedrela odorata) without one leaf on them. These are trees which lose their leaves during the dry season and continue to be leafless until we get some substantial rain. The larger tree in the background is paricá (Acacia polyphylla), which is also leafless. It will soon be blooming, followed by new leaves. If the drought continues for a long time, it will drop its leaves again and go through the same cycle. In the upper right and lower left hand corners you can see African mahoganies (Kaya ivorensis) with a full set of clothes. I don't remember seeing these tress losing all their leaves at the same time.

The hungry forest

Brazil nut trees are quite large; and the leaves are big too - and plentiful. When we walk under and around these giants this time of the year, we hear the rustle of the dry leaves as our feet plow through the littler. Food for the forest, that's what they become. By the time the next dry season begins, the litter will have vanished completely, all decomposed by termites and microorganisms. The ground is laid bare and the forest will wait for another cycle of falling leaves. More food, that's what they will become. The forest is hungry.

Brazil nut trees, taking it all off

Some people are surprised to learn that we have a summer and a winter in the Amazon. Summer is our dry season and winter the rainy season. Temperatures are a bit cooler during the rainy season because of cloud cover but there are very fews days when we get cold, which means temperatures in the 70s. The dramatic part of the story is that summer brings days, weeks and sometimes months without rain. During the winter we breath water and during the summer, we breath dust. The humidity is still quite high but the dust factor is unsupportable. Our native trees take advantage of this season to shed their leaves, like the Brazil nut tree in the attached image. Not all species lose their leaves at the same time and some, like the Brazil nut tree (Bertholetia excelsa), quickly put on a clean set of clothes. Notice the nut pods on the tree. They won't be mature until January, or there of. This is a good time to see production. It appears that this coming season will be more productive than last year.

Tarantula gets a name

I get excited when someone ventures forth with a name for some varmint or plant that I've presented on my Tropical Biodiversity blog. Such is the case with the tarantula presented this past Sunday. Lony writes: "This looks like it belongs to the Acanthoscurria family of tarantulas. Acanthoscurria brocklehursti to be exact. This most likely was a male. They do wonder around and are looking for females to mate. It is mating season right now." See the full comment on my post of 16 September, 2007. Thanks Lony.

Small frog

Frogs adore wet, dark and humid places, including the bottoms of plant vases. This little one had to find a new home when I removed a vase from the plant rack. It hid out for awhile among some old dead leaves from some medicinal plant and eventually must have found another wet environment to escape the dry season.