Indigenous tree species include mahogany, cedar, pine, rosewood, ebony, lignum vitae, cottonwood, logwood, majagua, and the deciduous, silvery yagruma, which shimmers as if frosted and bursts forth with huge lily-like blooms. Many species are in short supply following centuries of logging to supply the furniture makers of Europe and to clear the land for King Sugar. The mountain ranges still have ecosystems typical of original Antillean vegetation.

Archetypal species include the swollen baobab, which looks as if it has its roots in the air (for which it is sometimes called the “upside-down tree”), and the silver-trunked kapok, or silk-cotton, better known in Cuba as the revered ceiba (Ceiba pentandra), with broad trunk and wide-spreading boughs. It is considered sacred by adherents of santería. Other species are exotics, imports from far-off lands, such as eucalyptus from Australia.

The bully of trees is the jagüey, a species of strangler fig. It sprouts from the tops of trees from seeds dropped by birds or bats. It then sends roots to the ground, where they dig into the soil and provide a boost of sustenance. Slowly—it may take a full century—the roots grow and envelop the host tree, choking it until it dies and rots away, leaving the hollow, freestanding fig tree.

There are fruit trees, too, such as the alligator pear tree; the big, dark green aguacates; and the zapote, whose pulpy red fruit is the queen of Cuban fruits. One of Sierra del Rosario’s endemic species, Psidium guayabita, produces a berry from which sweet licor de guayabita and dry guayabita seca brandy are made. Sea grape trims the island’s shores, as does the coastal manchineel, whose poisonous sap and tiny apple-like fruits should be avoided.

Palms and large-leafed undergrowth such as the “everlasting plant,” whose large leaves form habitats for other plants, give way to ferns, bracken, pine trees, feathery-leafed palo de cotorra (parrot tree), and parasitic conde de pino (count of the pine) vine.

Above 2,000 meters, the vegetation changes abruptly to cloud forest. Some wind-battered elfin woods on exposed ridges are dwarfed, whereas more protected areas have majestically tall trees festooned with bromeliads, lichens, mosses, yellow-flowering palo de cruz vines, and all manner of lianas and creepers.

Many trees host epiphytes, arboreal nesters (“epiphyte” comes from the Greek, “upon plants”) that attach themselves to tree trunks or branches. The epiphytic environment is a kind of nutrient desert. Thus bromeliads—brilliantly flowering, spiky leafed “air plants” up to 120 centimeters across—have developed tanks or cisterns that hold great quantities of rainwater and decaying detritus in the whorled bases of their stiff, tightly overlapping leaves. The plants gain nourishment from dissolved nutrients in the cisterns. Known as “tank epiphytes,” they provide trysting places and homes for tiny aquatic animals high above the ground.