Drive inland and the pasture is dotted with enormous solitary trees, each one a green dome the size of a house casting a pool of shade the cattle stand in. Those are guanacastes, and the province took its name from them.
Where you’ll see it
Pasture and dry forest across the province, and as a shade tree in town plazas. The big old ones were left standing when the forest was cleared, for the cattle.
What to know
The pods are the thing to pick up: flat, dark brown, curled round on themselves into a shape so like an ear that the Nahuatl name meant exactly that. The tree drops its leaves in the dry season and flushes green with the first rains. The wood is prized, the shade is legendary, and the tree is the national tree of Costa Rica.
