Buttress Roots

While in Belize I saw numerous species of trees with buttress roots. These roots are common in species of trees found in the rain forest, because the trees have fairly shallow roots. The soils in the rain forest are nutrient poor, so having shallow, but widespread roots is a strategy that allows the tree to acquire nutrients from a wide area.
However, shallow roots don't provide much support to the tree, hence the buttresses. Some of these specialized roots can reach 15 feet. These were well over the top of my head.

The buttresses also provide surfaces for other flowering plants, mosses, lichens, and ferns to grow.

Belize

Iguana in tree top over the Sette River. 
Keel Billed Toucan
The Sette River
I just returned from a week in Belize which included attending a 5 day class on the Marine Ecology of the Reefs of Belize. We were going to spend three nights on Wee Wee Caye which is 9 miles off the coast, but the sea was so rough it was unsafe for us to travel out to the Caye in the small open boats we had. So we stayed at the Possum Point Biological Station and did one day trip to the caye in a large boat. The class turned out to be more about terrestrial rain forest ecology which was fine with me since we saw so many new birds, and walked through fabulous forests with trees that looked like they could pick up and start walking like those in the Lord of the Rings. We snorkeled in the rain in water warmer than the air. I saw amazing fan corals, brain coral, sea stars, fish, and sea anemones in just 3 to 4 feet of water. I also spend two nights at a lodge in Western Belize just a few miles from Guatemala and visited Mayan ruins.

From the International Airport in Belize City, which is the size of the airport in Long Beach CA, we flew on a 12 seat Cessna toward the Sette River.