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This Orange-barred Sulphur (my gallery link) is a colorful yellow butterfly found from Florida and South Texas south through Central America to Brazil, including every low altitude place in Costa Rica. Read more and see other people’s observations on BAMONA and for specifically Costa Rica on iNaturalistCR.
¡Pura Vida!
Click title to see post online.
One of my many “favorite” butterflies is this Malachite (my gallery link) which I recently shared one of from Hotel Colinas del Sol nearby and this one was one of the few in my garden this year, on a Lantana flower.
¡Pura Vida!
This little wildflower I saw along the side of the road in front of my house. Upon checking, I found that I had seen it one other time in my garden back in 2023 before I used iNaturalist and had an identification. I’m pretty certain of this ID which has already been verified by a botanist on iNaturalist. To see my 2023 observation, go to my gallery Scrambling Dayflower. You can read more about it on both iNaturalist and on Wikipedia.
¡Pura Vida!
This is another one of those “international migrants” in Costa Rica that grows well here but is native in this case to Brazil, Surinam, & Venezuela. At first glance I though it was a Red Ginger, but on a closer look, there are several differences! It is just one more species I’ve added to my Under Construction CR Flowers by Species with only this photo in the Brazilian Red-cloak gallery now. You can read about and see where others have seen this flower in Costa Rica on iNaturalistCR by clicking “View All” under TOTAL OBSERVATIONS where there is a map showing where. Or read more about them on Wikipedia (en español) or shorter one in English.
¡Pura Vida!
This is one of those peculiar butterflies in the Pieridae Family (whites-yellows-sulphurs) that can sometime appear more yellow (as this one) or in my experiences is usually more white or “whitish.” 🙂 It is the Statira Sulphur (my gallery link) seen frequently in my garden though this one was at the nearby Hotel Colinas del Sol during my overnight there for a house fumigation. It is found mostly in Central America with other Costa Rica sightings seen on iNaturalist Costa Rica where I am the lead observer and for those seen in Florida and South Texas in the states, check out BAMONA where I keep CR represented. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Note that as of today, we are still having a normal October with rain every afternoon and all are hoping that it will be sufficient to bring the water table back up from our lack of normal rain May-September. The dry season starts in December and the amount of water in the rainy season is important for plants, water table, etc. Some fear a shortage of water during the dry season and possibly more grass fires if this rain doesn’t continue through November.
This beautiful and delicate-looking flower is not seen as often as some of the other ginger flowers, but is another one of my many favorites! I saw this one a week or so ago at the local Hotel Colinas del Sol. And now that I’m building a gallery of flowers by species (still under construction) I do have a gallery with all my photos of the Crêpe Ginger (linked) with shots from 5 different locations. It is another “foreign” (Asia) flower that has “naturalized” here in Costa Rica. Read more about it on Wikipedia.
¡Pura Vida!
Yesterday afternoon, I added to my memorial to Yaison Quesada, the only photo I had of him (below) and a list of links to the 11 blog posts where I mentioned him or told about something he had done for me. I wanted everything about him to be in the same place, thus I added it all to yesterday’s nature post addition at: https://www.charliedoggett.net/2026/10/11/the-security-of-tree-limbs/
Scroll to the bottom of that post or click this photo to read about Jason Quesada.
I snapped this vine flower with my cellphone while walking down a Roca Verde street. It was growing on the side of the street on the edge of someone’s property, possibly growing wild. iNaturalist AI tells me it is Brazilian Nightshade – Solanum seaforthianum (linked to a Wikipedia article). If you keep your eyes open and scanning around, there are “little treasures” to find almost anywhere you walk here. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Touch the leaves and they curl up! Sensitive Plant – Mimosa pudica. See more unusual things in nature in my gallery Leaves & Nature Things.
¡Pura Vida!
I grow two groups of Maraca or Shampoo Ginger (Zingiber zerumbet) (My gallery link). The ones on the west side of my house by the Higueron Tree usually start yellow and turn orange and at a different time of year than these in my “Jungle Garden” on the south side of my casita which usually stay yellow during their 3 months plus of blooming, with some hints of orange. But this year on a south side one has turned a deep red as shown in the feature photo above. I have been cutting the tall plants back to give more sun to ground plants and the more sun might be the reason, though I don’t know for sure. Tropical plants are just as interesting to watch and photograph as much of the wildlife that I usually focus on.
I first experienced this interesting tropical flower on a jungle trip to Mayan ruins in Guatemala in 2006 December – Guatemala where this plant grew right outside my jungle room at Chiminos Lodge. Tropical adventures always include tropical plants! 🙂
And two more photos showing the usual yellow and some orange ones . . .
Continue reading “A Deeper Red Than Usual”
This year’s visit to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica included a week at Hotel Banana Azul with a day hike in Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge and my collection of photos are ready to see at https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2026-09-14-18-Banana-Azul-Gandoca-Manzanillo or you can click on the first page image below to get there. Two disclaimers as to why there are not as many photos this year: The bizarre weather with a Super-El-Niño, wind and rain every day (normally the driest month there), a muddy beach road with no butterflies at all (my main thing there now) and the global-warming and ocean rising has caused enormous erosion of the beaches there now, with almost no beach left. But it is still a beautiful nature place and I have a lot of photos from this year’s trip.
¡Pura Vida!
I’ve done blog posts of Caribe photos ahead through the end of September, but wanted to announce my trip gallery now. The first of October I will continue sharing nature photos from my garden and on walks in my hometown of Atenas. If I just look, there is some nature to experience every day! 🙂