Tropical interlude to chase winter blues

TPP was looking through a bunch of old color slides and while the class picture sought remains elusive, this beach scene emerged, and, well, ... Wow!  This brought back some great memories.  Is this not just the most appealing of beach scenes, sort of Big Sur meets the tropical rain forest, and to make it even more spectacular, this shot was taken from a table in little seaside bar.  So what are you waiting for, just pack your bags and figure out where this place is!  Hint: it's neotropical and in a national park that has no roads! 

 

Friday Fabulous Flower - Orchid

The end of December is a tough time to find a fabulous flower, but the rain forest ecology field trip archives always come to the rescue. This particular orchid (Prosthechea fragrans) as the specific epithet indicates has a wonderful fragrance, which is a bit unusual in orchids. Also unusual it's a "right side up" flower. Most orchids are resupinate meaning that their flower stalk twists 180 degrees, or the inflorescence is pendent and therefore upside down, which places the distinctive petal on the bottom, while here it is on the top. The neat thing about this view is that you can see the two pollinia, waxy masses of pollen, ready to be picked up and dispersed. No idea what pollinates this flower; never seen a visitor, but the nectar guides and flower size (~3 cm across) would indicate a bee.