Traveling 100 kilometers southeast to the center of the Unesco Sumaco Biosphere Reserve from Ecuador’s capital, Quito, takes an entire day. After three hours of driving to the forest’s edge, one can spend seven to fifteen hours traveling by boat, mule, and foot—mostly uphill and on a muddy road—to reach the interior. However, the journey is worthwhile since you end up in the center of a spotless forest that is home to a fairly unique discovery: walking palm trees. These trees truly travel across the forest as new roots sprout, sometimes two or three centimeters in length, much like the Ents from JRR Tolkien’s renowned Lord of the Rings series (but a little slower). The tree generates new, lengthy roots that, sometimes reaching a depth of 20 meters, locate new, more stable ground as the earth erodes, according to Vrsansky. The old roots then gradually lift into the air as the roots grow into the new soil and the tree calmly bends toward the new roots. It may take the tree several years to move to a new location with more stable ground and more sunshine. In the process of our research, we found two new species of vertebrates (a frog and a lizard), some unrecorded 30-meter waterfalls, and we were under attack by a large herd of enormous woolly monkeys.
