Over the last few days, we have continued documenting the presence of Catopsis nitida and Werauhia tonduziana in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. I thought I would give a shout out to my awesome climbing gear which has been so good to me, while I have climbed these amazing cloud forest trees. As you may know, in order to collect some of these two species of epiphytic bromeliads we need to climb these tall canopy trees. Some of you may be wondering how climbing trees works. We begin by finding a large enough tree, and identify a couple of branches our rope can be placed on. We then use a giant sling shot called a BigShot. With a weight tied to a small line, we can sling shot the weight over those desired branches. Then we can tie the line to our climbing rope and pull the rope up and over the branches. Finally, we tie a basal anchor on one end of our rope, and then we are ready to climb! |
We had a pretty successful few days of climbing, finding many samples. See below for a picture of me sitting next to a few beautiful Werauhia plants.
Also, I have to give props to Keylor, who has been a pretty dynamite plant sample collector. His nimbleness allows him to collect samples in the canopy while holding other samples in his mouth. All in the name of science! A pretty awesome picture of this process below.
That's all for now, thanks for reading! More soon!