Costa Rica’s Unexpected Forest Visitors

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Published on Saturday, November 22, 2025

By Victoria Torley

When you live in the tropics and have a greenhouse, you can expect visitors. Sometimes you show them around and answer questions about orchids and orchid growing. Sometimes you watch them and sometimes you want them to go away. A greenhouse, you see, is almost impossible to seal up completely.

I suppose it would be worse if I lived in India. Every morning, I would let my mongoose out into the greenhouse to deal with any Gray Ratsnakes (Pantherophis spiloides), a nonvenomous species of snake that might have snuck in during the night.

So far, I have been lucky. No leaf-cutter ants yet, just a few tiny ants in my wooden orchid mounts that I can get rid of with some Raid. A millipede here, a centipede there, and the occasional slug drinking stale beer (if you don’t know that method of dealing with slugs, get yourself online and look it up).

I do get little butterflies in the greenhouse, but they mostly manage to get out themselves. If there is a large butterfly or a moth, I just get out the butterfly net. That’s how I removed this moth from the greenhouse. It’s not that he wasn’t welcome, but he seemed to want to leave. I had expected a bird or two, but that hasn’t happened.

It’s not that he wasn’t welcome, but he seemed to want to leave. I had expected a bird or two, but that hasn’t happened.

What I do have that is very welcome is a lovely lizard in jewel-like colors. Lizards are welcome in the greenhouse because they eat bugs and no one needs bugs in the greenhouse. With any luck, if a wandering leaf cutter wanders in, he will be eaten before he snacks on anything.

Some people are afraid of all snakes, which seems a waste because most snakes are harmless and timid and it doesn’t take long to learn which ones you can befriend and which ones you should stay away from.

As for this snake, he can stay as long as he doesn’t eat the lizard.

Plant of the week. Bromeliads are also chasmophytes, plants that grow in the crevices of rocks. Some species of plants have found the perfect home in rock crevices, either on mountain peaks, in gorges, or on outcrops by the seaside. Here, they face little or no competition from other plants, and moisture and temperature are fairly constant deep down in these narrow fissures in the rock.

The foliage of bromeliads is generally arranged in a compact rosette consisting of a variable number of leaves. The foliage of many genera of bromeliad can be extremely colourful and highly patterned, bearing spectacular displays of red, maroon, gold, yellow, black, or green.

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Find more interesting stories about gardening in Costa Rica on the AM Costa Rica Garden Magazine. Questions on this article, Ms. Victoria Torley, gardener columnist, can be reached by emailing victoriatorley1@gmail.com
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