Near the small mountain town of Salento in central Colombia lies a valley called Cocora, which is famed for the enormously gigantic wax palm trees growing there. This type of palm tree can grow up to a height of 60 meters (200 ft) and is recognized as the national tree of Colombia.
It’s baffling to me why a palm tree would grow so tall. What could possibly be the evolutionary benefit? Perhaps these trees used to be surrounded by forest, as there’s no reason for them to be competing for light today.
To get a sense of just how tall these trees are, scroll down the picture below. At the bottom, you will see a small horse for scale. This is actually a full-size horse that’s scratching its bum on the trunk. I think it’s safe to say this palm tree is truly enormous.
Horse for scale.
Besides marvelling at these giant trees, there’s also some nice hiking to be had around Cocora Valley. One path leads to Acaime nature reserve, and it follows a stream through the jungle and features a series of unstable Indiana Jones-esque footbridges accross the river. There’s also a hummingbird sanctuary halfway down the route.
It was quite rainy and misty when I was there, which caused the mountain range to peek through the clouds in cool and mysterious ways.
To visit the Cocora valley, get on one of the many regular vans departing from Salento. Hiking to the butterfly sanctuary and back takes about 2-3 hours.
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It is really tall! Thank you for the article and photos.
Haha my pleasure!
Re evolutionary benefit of these very tall palms: could the shoots and fruit be edible? if so various ancestral types of climbing forest animals, might have started an evolutionary response that resulted in an advantage for trees that grew taller, thus reducing the amount of damage caused by stripping of shoots, flowering heads and nuts.
interesting!
The jungle that should be around them has been cut down. It looks cool, but is actually an ecological disaster. Those palms would never grow in the open like that. They get that tall because they need to get to the top of the Jungle canopy which is now missing/removed.