Small Thoughts for Small Minds

(Note: all pictures hot linked to the full-sized version)

When I went to Panama last month, I made the reservation only a week or so in advance. For some reason, ALL of the major hotels were fully booked. I ended up staying at a "jungle resort". Ah, the beauty of marketing…

Anyway, the place was the Avalon Grand Panama.

Their webpage make it seem like it is in the middle of the rain forest instead of a couple of hundred feet from one of the busiest roads in Panama (the Trasistmica between Panama City and Colon). But, they do have quite a few acres of forested land on the grounds.

Of course, is some aspects, it is apparent that they forgot that, even if they weren’t really in the middle of the rain forest, they were actually in the middle of a tropical country with an eight month rainy season and insane levels of humidity…

(Certain environments are not appropriate for pressed paper fan blades…)

I spent a couple of hours wandering around their "nature trails".

I was apparently incapable of getting a decent focus on these flowers. This is the best of a poor lot…

This swinging bridge was just as stable as it looks…

I saw several large spider webs and (again) proved incapable of taking a picture that was in focus. One of the biggest problems with a point-and-click camera is when the thing you want in focus is much smaller than the background objects. Especially tough with flowers and insects…

Anyway, here are two of the best shots (of a really sorry bunch) of Nephila clavipes (AKA golden orb spider or golden silk spider)…

From the wikipedia link (above), I found out the following interesting tidbit (poor grammer, etc., straight from wikipedia):

The silk of N. clavipes has recently been used to help in mammalian neuronal regeneration. in vitro experiments showed that a single thread of silk can lead a severed neuron the way inside the body to the site where it was severed from. With a tensile strength of 4×10⁹ N/m, it exceeds that of steel by a factor of six. It is not recognized by the immune system and has antibacterial properties.

I’ve heard they have some really big spiders in Panama, but I was unprepared when I found the following web.

Clever creatures. Apparently they are adapting to handle the most common types of prey. This one disguised its web as a swingset. It is certainly too primitive to fool an adult human, but the juveniles might not have enough experience to recognize the danger…

This is one of the BEST fixed (not swinging) bridges in the nature walk area. Some of them I was pretty concerned about where I placed my feet…

I was fascinated by the reproductive organs of this palm-like plant…

It appears to be Carludovica palmata, AKA "Panama hat palm" (even though it is not, apparently, a palm at all).

Near the ground in this cluster, you can see the (white, stringy) flowering inflorescence (tightly packed flowers on a thick, cylindrical stalk).

Click on this picture to see the (bees?) in detail, being tricked into pollinating the flowers…

After the flowers are fertilized, the stalk grows longer while the "fruit" matures. I guess the extra height helps distribute the seeds.

Of course, being a rain forest (nominally) means a fair amount of fungi….

Possibly related to Polyporus badius??

Another problem with this point-and-click camera is the overwhelming flash when taking pictures very close to the object being photographed. Tends to wash out any light-colored areas…

Some type of Stereum? Ostrea perhaps?

This one’s seen better days…

Oh yeah, I DID actually spend time with customers as well…

No. I wasn’t playing pirate…

But, a couple of weeks ago, after a morning presentation in New Orleans and a muffuletta in the French Quarter, my colleague and I drove around a bit. Down Charles Avenue to see the big, old houses in the Garden District. Stopped at Cooter Brown’s for a beer. (Cooter Brown’s has a pretty good beer selection in a city known for quantity, not quality, when it comes to beer.) Back to the French Quarter via Magazine Street to see how much difference a few blocks can make in the standard of living…

Then we drove out of town a bit to the Barataria Preserve, part of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park & Preserve.

It was almost 5 p.m. by the time we found the visitor center (which was the closing time for the visitor center - AND the parking lot…) so we quickly walked on the Visitor Center trail. This was a wooden walkway (deck-style) raised a foot or so above the water level.

(Note: these pictures really need to be viewed full scale to get all of the detail. To see the full-sized version, click on any picture.)

I think this is a bush palmetto (Arecaceae Sabal minor).

Since it was still winter, and most trees were sans leaves, the "Spanish moss" (Tillandsia usneoides) was especially noticeable.

A bit of a closeup of the Spanish moss…

I was fascinated by the Cyprus "knees". Very interesting. Until googling tonight, I had no idea what they were. I could tell that they weren’t stumps - too uniform in height. But beyond that? Nada…

That’s one benefit of doing this blog - I’m so OCD about providing identification, that I do a lot of research before posting…

Some more…

We didn’t see much by way of wildlife. One exception was this barred owl (strix varia). Even though he was 25 feet up in the tree, he didn’t let us get very close…

Toward the edge of the swamp, the trees thinned out and a lot of tall grasses took their place…

I’d like to go back in the spring time to see some greenery. The only color (other than the brilliantly blue sky - it was unusually cold for New Orleans) was from the red maple trees’ samaras (seed/fruit).

Since the following pictures are similar to some already included, I’ll just drop them in at the end. But I couldn’t decide which ones that I liked the best, so consider them bonus pictures or ignore them…

If I can identify a couple of the flowers, I might post some pix from my trip to Santos, Brazil, next…