A Walk Through The Jungle Part 3

Traces of Iris (2001) Remain

It is appropriate that thoughts of hurricanes past are in my mind at the moment since it was this time last year that we experienced Hurricane Earl.  Fortunately for us here in Englishtown, Earl barely glanced us as it tracked to our north.  That was not the case for Hurricane Iris in 2001.  Category 4 Iris made landfall right here in Monkey River Village and Englishtown.  Iris was second only to Hurricane Hattie (1961) as the most destructive hurricane to hit Belize in recorded hurricane history.

Tracking map of Hurricane Iris, 2001.  The left-most orange dot is right over Monkey River Village and Englishtown (from Wikipedia).

Hurricane Iris had a change of course and strengthened unexpectedly, resulting in only a 23 hr advance warning for Belize.  According to Wikipedia "On reaching the western Caribbean Sea, Iris rapidly intensified into a Category 4 on the Saffir–Simpson scale. A small hurricane with an eye of only 7 mi (11 km) in diameter, Iris reached peak winds of 145 mph (230 km/h) before making landfall in southern Belize near Monkey River Town on October 9."  Hurricane Iris generated a 15 foot storm surge and had wind speeds of 145mph when it made landfall.  It took the lives of 24 people in Belize, 20 of whom were onboard a scuba diving boat docked at Big Creek, 12 miles north of Monkey River.   Most of the houses in Monkey River Village were completely destroyed and all suffered damage.  Amazingly there was no loss of life in the village.  We had visited Monkey River Village and the area for the first time in 1999 and we bought our property in 2004, after Hurricane Iris.  The Village had been largely rebuilt by then, but the property we bought was still a mess of tangled downed trees and smaller plants growing in thick profusion.

As Nolbert, Barnie, and I walked along the coast, signs of Iris are still evident, 16 years later, in the form of old trees surviving after being toppled over.

Strangler fig, still growing and flourishing 16 years after Iris.

This strangler fig must have been a grand old thing when Iris uprooted it.  But it, like many tropical species, is a survivor that adapts to drastic changes in circumstances.  This tree is probably 30 or 40 feet tall now, with many minor trunks that had been side branches pre-Iris.  You can see in places where it has dropped  adventitious roots that wrap around the old trunk and continue down into the soil.  It is hard to be accurate, but it appears that the diameter of the original tree at what had been the soil line was at least 5 feet.

Nolbert and Barnie in front of the strangler fig for scale.  Look at that happy dog.

This sea grape growing nearby looks superficially similar to the strangler fig. But it doesn't have the strangling growth habit of the fig.  Again, the pre-Iris side branches became minor trunks after the tree fell over.  Where the old trunk touches the ground, it has developed new roots.

Nolbert and Barnie in front of a toppled sea grape tree.

The storm surge from Iris pushed sea water over the land; only plants that are tolerant of salt water inundation survived.  But the jungle renews itself quickly. Tropical plants recover quickly and new plants grow in any opening.

One of the very common new plants is this sea hibiscus (or close relative).   It is not so much a tree as it a large shrub.  It can grow with the waves lapping its feet and is often mixed in the mangroves.

Sea hibiscus flower.

 Its quite attractive flowers, like other hibiscus flowers, last only a day, getting darker as the day progresses.

Insect in hibiscus flower.

Not sure what this insect is.  I actually had to lift the camera over my head to get the shot, so I didn't get a good look at it.

Tamarindo-Tamarind-Tambran Small mystery solved - they are cousins!  Mitchell at "Mitchell is Moving" blog had posted a couple of times about a tree called tamarindo planted as an urban ornamental tree in his town in Spain.  He described them as having pompom-type flowers.  But that is nothing like the tamarindo trees I am familiar with here in the Caribbean, which greatly confused me (but then I can be easily confused).  However I recently learned of another tree around here called tamarindo that does have pompom type flowers, the Cojoba rufescens tree.  I had been calling it the "hair scrunchy tree" (your will see why in one of the following photos).  It has a cousin, Cojoba aroborea, also called tamarindo, that is used for furniture.  If that is not confusing enough, it is also called "Barba de Jolote".  More detail in Wikipedia.  Although the flowers of hair scrunchy tree (Cojoba) and the tamarind tree we grow for its sweet/tart fleshy pods don't look anything alike, the leaves do.  And they are in the same taxonomic family that Mimosa trees are in.  Compare the next 2 photos to see the resemblance.

Cojoba rufescens tree with its pompom flowers.

Tamarind tree (see Wikipedia entry here).

Hair scrunchy!  And pompom flowers of the Cojoba rufescens tree.

Orchid-like flowers of the Tamarind tree.

We planted the Tamarind tree, but the Cojoba grows wild.  Another tree growing up in the Iris-devastated area is Gumbo Limbo, AKA tourist tree due to peeling red skin.  Gumbo limbo trees can grow to quite a large size and we have 3 of various sizes that survived Iris on our property.  I love these gumbo limbo trees; their fruit attract lots of birds and they have a high open canopy atop large gracefully curving trunks.

Young gumbo limbo tree with shedding red skin.

 Our neighbors had several Coral Trees that survived Hurricane Iris.  We intend to plant several during this rainy season.  Coral trees (Erythrina) are a great choice for hurricane prone areas; they have buttress roots that help keep them upright in high winds and they can tolerate salt water inundation.  Another plus for us is that they actually thrive in low swampy areas like we have.  They have the most incredible complex blossoms that attract many birds.  Apparently, all we have to do get them started is to stick a young branch in the ground!  How easy is that?

Characteristic spiny trunk of a a young coral tree.  As the trunk expands, the spines fall off.

And that brings us back to hurricane season.  This time last year we had held our breath as the wrath of Earl passed to our north.  We lost a big fig tree a day after Earl as the the shallow roots pulled out of the saturated ground.  It will be replaced with a Coral bean (Erythrina sp).  We were able to salvage the orchids growing in the fig, and they are blooming beautifully as I write this post.

We moved our bedroom into the new addition of our cabana as Earl was approaching last August, and so have been here a year now.  During that year, we took the opportunity to redo the original bathroom and kitchen in the old cabana.  That project was completed a couple of weeks ago.  Interestingly, the wood for the cabinets is wild trambran, AKA "Barba de Jolote", which we now know is related to the tamarind tree we grow for the pods, the "hair scrunchy" tree that grows wild here, and the tamarindo tree used in urban plantings in Spain that Mitchell wrote about.

Of Storms and Zinc and Fallen Trees, of Toilets New and Rigs

Hard to believe that it has been six weeks since our hurricane dress rehearsal.  For us, Hurricane Earl was a non-event; not much difference between the "before" and "after" images below.  We hardly lost even a leaf from the trees.

The day before Earl.  The days leading up to a hurricane are generally incredibly calm and fine.  There is hardly a ripple on the sea.  The water is so clear that the submerged breakwater is quite visible running under the dock and parallel to the shore.

Six weeks after Earl.  For about a week after Earl, the sea was a little rough.  Since then we have had several series of 5 or 6 calm days then 3 or 4 rough and windy days, a pattern that is typical for this time of year.  

I went a little crazy taking photos before Earl thinking that everything could be blown or washed away.  I wanted to at least have photos to remember it by.

The new cabana as viewed from the old.  This was before Earl.  It looks jus the same now.  :-)

The old cabana as viewed from the new.  Also before Earl, and it looks just the same now.

Overall, we were pleased with how our hurricane preparations went, but we did find a some areas in which to be better prepared.  Along the entire covered veranda we put up hurricane shutters made from roofing metal, locally referred to as "zinc".  It took about 1 and a half days to get all the zinc screwed in place.

This what the zinc shutters look like from the outside.  

We had done a dry fitting of all the zinc sheets earlier in the year and spray painted numbers on each sheet for their location.  That worked really well.  What we hadn't done in the dry fit was to have all the wood pieces for the end wall shown in the above photo, so we scrambled a bit to get those pieces cut to size.  We also put zinc up on all the exposed windows and doors.  The zinc performed as expected in keeping the wind from driving the rain into the cabana.

Oddly, it was the day after Earl came through that we lost a big fig tree.

Just behind the generator shed, you can see the roots sticking up at the left side of the photo and the bulk of the canopy in the right half of the photo.  A little damage to the roof and to a lime tree; nothing major.

The water table is so high and the roots don't grow very deep.  It is actually hard to understand how the tree was upright to begin with!

 We will miss the shade from this tree.  I got seeds for an African Tulip tree that I want to get started to replace this tree.  I will plant at least 2 of those seedlings a little farther back and to each side of the shed.  They are well adapted to grow on swampy land and have big buttress roots to keep them upright.  Plus they have amazing flowers.

All of this greenery growing around the trunk of the fig is a cowhorn orchid, Cyrtopdium punctatum. We cut out that big section of the trunk and a smaller orchid-covered branch to try to save the orchids.  We put the trunk and branch in the shade of the cashew tree, but the orchids are looking rather sad.  Still, they might pull through.

This is what the flowers of this orchid look like.  I took this shot (and the next flower shots) the same day as the shot above.

These orchids have super long, 5 or more feet long, flower stalks.  Ants love the flowers and will defend them vigorously!

A closer view of a single flower.

 This particular plant is growing on a buttonwood tree about 40 feet from the fig tree.  We also have a lovely Brassavola orchid that grows here.

Brassavola nodosa, called Lady of the Night.

Not an orchid, but just as lovely, Crinum asiaticum lily flowers.  This lily, native to Asia (duh!) has naturalized in warm regions worldwide.

Getting back to Earl.  We had not yet moved into the new cabana when we heard Earl was headed toward Belize.  We moved in 2 days ahead of Earl for a couple of reason.  One reason was safety - the new cabana is built to much higher standards than the original cabana.  The other reason was emotional - if we were to lose it all because of a hurricane, I at least wanted to have slept there one night!  So Earl served to get us in gear.

We also set up the new composting toilet before Earl got here.  I feel a bit like John Gray of Going Gently, writing of toilets on the blog, but this Nature's Head Toilet is quite the thing.

Our new bathroom.

The toilet has a container (we call it the "pee jug") for collecting urine separate from the solids and that really keeps odors down.  There is also an exhaust fan (the tubing on the left vents the fan to outside).  So far, we like the toilet very much.  The solids get emptied every 2 weeks and the pee jug gets emptied every 2-3 days.  With our high water table, this makes so much more sense than a septic tank.

Other things of note include the return of an exploratory oil drillship.  It was anchored just outside the Port Honduras Marine Reserve that extends from just in front of us to the south near Punta Gorda, Belize.  I took a few photos of it with my wholly inadequate zoom lens.

It was heading south when I took this photo.

A rather pretty sight all lit up at dawn.  I sure hope they don't find oil, though.

I do hope this is the last we see of it.  The Meso-American Barrier Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world, is only a few miles away.

On a brighter note, we have a better internet connection, at least for now.  Feels good to be blogging again.

Safe and Sound in Englishtown, Belize

We are safe and sound here in Englishtown, Belize.  Not sure yet how the rest of the country fared.  The last radar image we saw last night showed all Belize covered by Earl except for a tiny little triangle that happened to include us.  We had a little rain, maybe an inch or 2 so far - it's still falling, and lots of wind from the northwest.  A tiny bit of rain blew in the back door.   We hardly even heard the wind, but the rain on the tin roof makes for a noisy night!  Right now the sea is within normal for waves and tide height and the beach is intact.  Some branches down.  I am off now to take care of the neighbors' dogs.  It is still raining, but not too hard.  Details and photos later.  Things are good.