So fleeting a spring

Natural History, April, 2003 by Erin Espelie

Every year in Panama, just after the first downpour of the rainy season, the flowers of the guayacan tree (Tabebuia guayacan) burst open. The explosion of blossoms, whose timing coincides with the northern temperate spring, announces the end of the four- to five-month-long dry season. The downpour, and a temperature change, are thought to trigger the trees' ready buds to swell and bloom. Water plays such a critical role that, depending on rain patterns, a blossom-filled tree may be just a short distance away from a dry, unadorned one.

Native bees are drawn to the sensory delights of the guayacan, but the trees' golden-petal lucre is something of a cheat: the blossoms are not receptive to pollinators for more than a day, and they remain on the trees for only a few days before descending--like migrating butterflies--to the forest floor. Photographer Christian Ziegler found the guayacan tapestry pictured here not quite a mile from the Smithsonian Research Station on Barro Colorado Island in March. Detecting a "light, sweet smell" in the air, Ziegler said he spotted leaf-cutter ants carting away clippings of guayacan flowers--an easily digestible meal for the insects' symbiotic fungi.

Hours after dropping from the branches, Ziegler noted, the trees' saffron blossoms--even the ant's radiating trails--had darkened to yellow-brown. By the end of the day the flowers had lost all their brilliance, blending in with the leaf litter of the forest floor.