Today we flew to Belize! I slept through my alarm and barely woke up in enough time to avoid being left behind. After a rocky start and a delayed flight (we still waited over an hour at the airport, and more after boarding the plane, we finally arrived.

On landing, after dealing with bags and logistics, I immediately started to try identifying trees… and immediately realized that I was in over my head in terms of identifying them from a distance. I focused mostly on leaf shape, bark texture, and other details when I was researching them, but did not take note of the overall appearance of the tree (beyond size).

I did notice what I thought might be Quamwood trees as we came in. Quamwood (Schizolobium parahyba) trees bloom yellow and can stand a bit above or even with the canopy, so they stick out like sore thumbs when in bloom. Scott pointed out a trumpet tree (Cecropia obtusifolia) at a restaurant called Cheers, which we stopped at on the way to the Crystal Paradise Ecolodge, where we are staying just for tonight. There are many here as well (I will attach a picture here as soon as I upload it).

I think I also noticed an Acacia species, based in part on similarity to Texas species, but there are multiple of these in Belize and I did not know the specific species. It was blooming red.

We can also see a Horse’s Balls tree (Stemmadenia donnell-smithii) right out the upstairs window of our shared cabin. It is easily identified by the shape of the seed.

After today, we will have one ethernet cable and be limited to any devices that can connect to it (and that is only available when the generator is on), so this might be my last post for a while.