MANUEL ANTONIO TRAVEL GUIDE

Plants and Rainforest of Manuel Antonio

Manuel Antonio’s forest sits in the transition between tropical moist and tropical wet forest, edged by mangroves, wetlands and a narrow strip of beach trees. SINAC records about 346 plant species in the national park, and they are the reason the animals are here: leaves for sloths and howlers, fruit for monkeys and toucans, flowers for bats and bees. One tree on the beach deserves real caution, the manzanillo: SINAC asks visitors not to sit in its shade, touch it or eat its fruit.

READING THE FOREST

The habitats of Manuel Antonio

Travel Guide › Plants and rainforest

This isn’t a complete botanical inventory. It’s a visitor’s introduction to the kinds of plant life you will walk through, drawn mainly from SINAC and the national park’s 2013–2018 management plan.

Humid forest

The management plan explains that the park was created partly to protect a piece of forest in the transition between tropical moist and tropical wet forest, a type that has almost disappeared from the region. Forest covers about 621 hectares, around a third of the park’s land area. Only a small part still looks like the original forest (about 105 hectares in a 2005 assessment), mostly on the steepest ground around Puerto Escondido and Punta Catedral, where trees such as guácimo colorado, guapinol, lechoso and ceiba dominate. Other areas are old regrowth, and some former cattle pastures from the 1970s are now young forest with guanacaste, laurel, peine de mico, guarumo and guaba trees.

Records from INBio cited in the plan put the park’s land flora above 354 species. Around 19 are endemic to Costa Rica, and a few, such as the bromeliad Pitcairnia halophila (a piñuela) and the orchid Epidendrum congestum, are known only from the park.

Beaches and coastal forest

Behind the sand grows a narrow fringe of trees that can tolerate salt, wind and drought, including the manzanillo, the beach jicarillo (Amphitecna latifolia) and the chaperno. The Indian almond (Terminalia catappa), with its big leaves that turn red before they fall, is also common on beaches here, but it is an introduced tree originally from India that shades out native plants (crtrees.org).

Mangroves and wetlands

SINAC describes a mangrove of about 18 hectares, a mix of fresh and salt water, that you can see from the trails behind Playa Manuel Antonio and Playa Espadilla Sur, with red, piñuela and caballero mangroves. Across the park’s estuaries the management plan lists red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), the tea mangrove or piñuela (Pelliciera rhizophorae), black and white mangroves, buttonwood and the mangrove fern. There is also a small lagoon between Espadilla and Manuel Antonio beaches, and a herbaceous swamp near the Naranjo River that fills with platanillos (heliconias) in the rainy season.

PLANTS AND ANIMALS

How plants support the wildlife

Every animal in our wildlife guide depends on these plants. A few examples:

Leaves for sloths and howlers. Brown-throated three-fingered sloths feed mainly on Cecropia trees (Animal Diversity Web); in Manuel Antonio that means the guarumo. Mantled howlers prefer young leaves, which carry more protein and fewer bitter tannins.
Fruit for monkeys and birds. Capuchins eat mostly fruit and help spread seeds through the forest, and toucans live largely on fruit (Animal Diversity Web). Scarlet macaws go further and crack open hard seeds and nuts.
Night flowers for bats. The ceiba opens its pink flowers at dusk, and they are pollinated by bats (crtrees.org).
Homes for ants. Guarumo trees house Azteca ants in their hollow stems and feed them; the ants in return defend the tree against leaf-eaters (Marting et al. 2018, Scientific Reports).
Even the poisonous manzanillo feeds someone. Garrobos (black spiny-tailed iguanas) swallow its fruit whole on the beach (crtrees.org).
Nurseries in the mangroves. The management plan records crabs, snails, fish, herons and the endangered mangrove hummingbird in the park’s mangroves.

The seasons change the forest too. On the Pacific slope the dry season runs roughly December to March (IMN), and trees such as the ceiba, the jobo and the peine de mico drop their leaves for part of it, while the manzanillo puts out fresh green leaves just before the rains (crtrees.org).

SAFETY FIRST

The manzanillo tree: do not touch

SINAC’s official guidance for Manuel Antonio National Park reads: “Manzanillo tree located on the beach is toxic, please do not sit at its shadow, do not touch or eat its fruit.” You can read it under “Recommendations” on SINAC’s official Manuel Antonio National Park page.

How to recognize it

A beach-edge tree, usually 10 to 20 m tall, sometimes leaning or partly buried in sand, with gray, cracked bark and no buttresses.
Glossy, waxy, oval leaves about 6 cm long, with a prominent yellow midrib and a long leaf stalk.
Small, round, green to yellowish fruits about the size of a small apple (around 4 cm), which can carpet the sand in April and May.
A white, milky sap that oozes from any broken leaf, twig or fruit.

(Description from crtrees.org and the University of Florida IFAS Extension.)

Why it matters

The University of Florida IFAS Extension states that all parts of the manzanillo (manchineel, Hippomane mancinella) are extremely poisonous, that its milky sap causes burn-like blisters on skin, and that eating any part of the tree can be lethal. Sap can drip from leaves and twigs onto people below, and crtrees.org notes it can cause swelling, blistering and, in the eyes, temporary blindness.

What to do

Don’t sit, lie down, hang a towel or shelter from rain under a manzanillo.
Don’t touch the tree, and don’t pick up the fruit, even from the sand. Keep a close eye on children, who may think the fruit is a little apple.
If sap gets on skin or in the eyes, rinse with plenty of clean water and get medical help, especially for the eyes.

TREES TO KNOW

Trees you can learn to recognize

These trees are documented in Manuel Antonio National Park and described in detail by crtrees.org, a guide to the trees of Costa Rica’s Pacific slope with many observations from the park. Enjoy them with your eyes: SINAC asks visitors not to touch plants, and nothing should be picked, tasted or taken home.

Guarumo (Cecropia peltata)

The only Cecropia in the park. A fast-growing pioneer tree of 10 to 15 m with a thin, hollow trunk ringed with leaf scars and a few long branches. The leaves are huge (30 cm or more across), round with nine deep, finger-like lobes, dark green above and strikingly whitish below, so a guarumo flashes silver in the wind. Its open crown makes it one of the easiest places to spot sloths. It lives only about 20 years, shading the ground so slower, longer-lived trees can grow beneath it.

Ceiba (Ceiba pentandra)

An emergent giant of 25 to 35 m or more, with a straight, branchless trunk, rounded buttress roots and an umbrella-shaped crown. The bark is gray and smooth, with stubby thorns on young trunks and thinner branches. Leaves are palmate, with seven narrow leaflets. On the Pacific slope it usually drops its leaves around December, flowers with pink, night-opening blossoms in January, and releases seeds wrapped in cottony kapok in March. IUCN status: Least Concern (assessed 2017).

Guapinol (Hymenaea courbaril)

One of the tallest trees in Manuel Antonio, up to 40 m, with a perfectly straight, columnar trunk and smooth gray bark, sometimes marked with clear yellow resin. The easy clue is the leaf: two leathery, asymmetrical leaflets that mirror each other, like a pair of hands. It sheds its leaves around September and October and grows a fresh set in November. Its big pods earn it the English nickname “stinking toe”.

Jobo (Spondias mombin)

A common canopy tree with thick, deeply fissured gray bark and large compound leaves of 11 to 17 leaflets. It drops its leaves in the dry season, fills the air with the scent of small white flowers from about mid-March to mid-May, and later bears plum-shaped yellow fruits that ripen and fall around August.

Peine de mico (Apeiba tibourbou)

“Monkey comb”. A small pioneer tree of trail edges and young forest, with smooth, pale green to silvery bark, thin wavy buttresses and large hairy leaves. Its round, 7 cm fruits are covered in flexible bristles, like a comb, and its yellow flowers smell of roses.

Guácimo colorado (Luehea seemannii)

A big tree of the old forest that stands out for the tawny, golden-brown fuzz on the underside of its leaves, which gives the whole crown a bronze color. In flower it shows balls of white stamens above the canopy.

MANGROVES

Mangroves: the forest at the water's edge

Mangroves are trees that can live with their roots in salty, tidal water. In Manuel Antonio they line the lagoon behind the beaches and the park’s estuaries. The management plan lists several species, including:

Red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle, mangle colorado), one of the dominant species in the park’s better-preserved mangroves. IUCN: Least Concern (assessed 2015).
Tea mangrove or piñuela (Pelliciera rhizophorae), also dominant in parts of the park’s estuaries. IUCN: Vulnerable (assessed 2024).
Caballero mangrove (Rhizophora racemosa), black mangroves (Avicennia), white mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa) and buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus).

The management plan notes that the Lagunas de Manuel Antonio estuary receives the Quebrada Camaronera, a stream that drains an area of heavy tourist development, and considers it one of the most polluted estuaries on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. It’s a reminder that what happens outside the park, including in hotels and homes, reaches the park’s water.

You can see the mangrove from the beach trails in the park. For guided walks with a naturalist, see our wildlife and nature tours.

WHAT YOU SEE AROUND HOTELS

Garden plants and forest plants

Many of the brightest flowers you see around Manuel Antonio, such as the red ginger that grows around ECOTICA‘s bungalows, are garden plants. They are lovely, and insects such as bees visit them, but they aren’t the native forest plants described above.

ECOTICA sits on about ten acres of rainforest a few minutes from the national park, and the same rules apply here as on the trail: look closely, but don’t pick, taste or take plants home. SINAC asks the same in the park, and it also asks visitors not to collect shells or snails from the beaches.

Want to see the forest from the inside? Read our Manuel Antonio National Park guide, browse experiences at ECOTICA, or read about what a rainforest stay is like.

Wildlife & nature tours

SOURCES

Sources and further reading

Last reviewed: September 2026. Conservation categories come from the IUCN Red List assessment shown next to each name; categories can change when species are reassessed. Park rules and opening details belong to SINAC, so check its official page before you go.