Willow Zuchowski: With Her Head in the Clouds

With Her Head in the Clouds

     Willow Zuchowski needs a hat rack simply to distinguish her many occupations: this woman wears a lot of different hats. First and foremost, Ms. Zuchowski is a botanist who has lived in the Monteverde area of Costa Rica for nearly three decades. She visited Costa Rica a few times in the late Seventies as a vacationing botanist, then accepted a position in the early Eighties that allowed her to return to Monteverde to work as a field assistant on a hummingbird-plant interaction project and has called that area “home” ever since. Willow is also a renowned author with four books to her name, as well as a booklet of Common Flowering Plants of the Monteverde Cloud Forest and a four-fold laminate covering the Cloud Forest of Montverde. She writes passionately about this area. And Willow is an adept illustrator and includes her work in each of her books. Truly, the culmination of these endeavors makes Willow Zuchowski a formidable teacher and instructor. Her works are detailed and specific enough to serve any advanced botany student and yet straightforward and digestible for any lay person, such as myself. For me, this is an indication of a natural teacher.

     A good example of the cohesive mix of her talents lies between the covers of the book “An Introduction to Cloud Forest Trees  Monteverde, Costa Rica”, for which she rendered all the illustrations. The text, written by William Haber, covers eighty-eight common species of cloud forest trees, indigenous to that locale. The book is separated into three cohesive sections, beginning with an overview of Monteverde that covers its geography, climate and soil, along with a description of the various forms of pollination and seed dispersal and an overview of the biodiversity of the vegetation there and in Costa Rica in general.

     The second section of the book is the real meat of the publication, dealing with the identification of the trees, dividing them into ten major groups for the benefit of the reader. Willow’s illustrations are detailed and specific, testimony to her gift of communicating not only with words but with her drawings as well. The third and final section is a series of four appendices, including a very useful glossary of botanical terms. Author Mark Plotkin has been quoted as saying that, “this book belongs in the backpack of all nature lovers headed for Central America”. I agree wholeheartedly.

     Willow’s other publications include “Tropical Trees of Costa Rica” and “Tropical Blossoms of Costa Rica”, two handy field guides, as well as the extensive “Tropical Plants of Costa Rica: a Guide to Native and Exotic Flora”. All of Ms. Zuchowski’s books are available at the Jaime Peligro book stores in Playa Tamarindo and Tilaran.

     Her newest project is a native plant propagation and garden initiative called ProNativas, which had its impetus in Monteverde and is now spreading throughout Costa Rica.

     So there we have it: Willow Zuchowski: illustrator and author, teacher, ecologist and botanist currently in search of a new tree, where she can hang her hats of many shapes and colors…

     For readers interested in Ms Zuchowski’s Monteverde laminate, please refer to: http://www.massaudubon.org/shop/books.php?type=pubs.
     All comments concerning this article are gladly welcome.