Peak experience: the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia harbors rainforest reserves and a drive-in volcano

Natural History, March, 2005 by Robert H. Mohlenbrock

Beginning in my high school days, whenever I happily browsed through books on geography and travel, I was fascinated by pictures of the Pitons, two pyramidal volcanic peaks that rise along the coast of the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. My chance to see them "in the flesh" finally came in January of last year, when my wife Beverly and I traveled to the island. We flew to the capital city, Castries, on the island's western coast, and headed south in our rental car toward Soufriere, Saint Lucia's third largest city. The journey along the narrow, crooked, but well-paved road took about an hour. Although our route never strayed far from the coast, it passed almost entirely through mountainous terrain, only occasionally dipping down to a picturesque fishing village.

The final leg of our drive took us through rainforest, virtually announced by tree ferns as high as forty feet. As we rounded one sharp curve, I could not contain my own excited announcement, as the mighty Pitons came into view through a forest opening: "There they are!" I exclaimed. The two peaks, Gros Piton (French for "large peg") and Petit Piton ("small peg") made a striking couple. They also recall Saint Lucia's checkered colonial past, reminding the visitor that many locals still speak a French patois, even though English is the island's official language.

We continued through the rainforest, then descended to the sea and the city of Soufriere, on the west coast of the island. The two Pitons lay to our south, though from some vantage points we could not see Gros Piton, taller than its 2,461-foot sibling by 158 feet but often concealed behind it. The Pitons are probably what is left of a complex of volcanoes. Their steep slopes extend 250 feet below sea level.

In Soufriere we visited the Diamond Botanical Gardens, where trails offer close-up views of vegetation, including many native species, along with mineral springs and a waterfall. Saint Lucia is a popular destination for divers and snorkelers, who report seeing lots of sponges, including the large barrel sponge, on the Pitons' underwater slopes. Caves, reefs, and peaks, all abounding with colorful fish, also lure the underwater visitor.

Above the water line, coconut palms ring the base of the Pitons, and a little higher up the dominant flora change to dry-loving species, including a number of euphorbias and other semisucculent plants. On their eastern side the Pitons are cloaked in the middle with deciduous tropical dry forest; nearer the summit is a rainforest of mostly evergreen species. At the summits and on the western side, where high winds and cooler temperatures make growing conditions most severe, is a so-called elfin forest comprising dwarf, gnarly trees draped with epiphytes, or air plants, including orchids.

Climbing the Pitons, though, is not the most straightforward way to see Saint Lucia's rainforests. The summit trails are hazardous and difficult--and sometimes closed because of the danger of rockfall. Fortunately, other zones of rainforest are accessible to hikers and drivers within the island's forest reserves, which cover nearly thirty square miles of the island's interior. Mount Gimie, at 3,117 feet Saint Lucia's highest point, lies within the reserves [see map at right]. Permission to enter the reserves must be obtained from Saint Lucia's Forest and Lands Department.

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The rainforests get more than 150 inches of rain a year, on average, mostly from June through November. The trees forming the upper canopy grow as tall as 180 feet, and many have large girths. The most common species is gommier, a member of the Burseraceae family. Temperate North America has no burseraceous representatives, but two Old World species are familiar, at least in name: frankincense and myrrh. Another tree species on Saint Lucia is bois canon, or cecropia, whose large, palm-like leaves decay very slowly when they fall to the ground. The hiker is apt to spot the leaves on the forest floor before noticing the tree itself, towering overhead.

Beneath these and other large trees is a dense mid-canopy of trees and tall shrubs, ranging from twenty to sixty feet high. Among them is dedefouden, or bead tree, whose shiny red-and-black seeds are gathered to make necklaces, earrings, and eyes for teddy bears. Tree ferns (known locally as fwije) and bamboo grasses also inhabit the midcanopy layer. Epiphytes cling to the branches of many trees, and vines seeking sunlight climb their trunks.

Hard to spot but at the top of many visitors' watch lists is the Saint Lucia parrot, a green-, red-, and blue-feathered endemic species that lays its eggs in hollows in the tops of the gommier trees. The numbers of the birds in the wild have fallen to critical levels, because of loss of habitat and because they are taken locally for food or captured for the pet industry. Thanks to a conservation effort, however, the population has increased to 800 from a low of about 100 in 1979.

The snake most apt to be seen in the rainforest is the boa constrictor. Two of the island's other snakes are of special interest to herpetologists--though they do not occur in the rainforest. One is the Saint Lucia racer, perhaps the rarest snake in the world, and the other is the worm snake, one of the smallest, measuring less than six inches long.