Common Trees of Yasun‪í‬

Finding Species was founded on the photographic body of work documenting the countless species in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park and Biosphere Reserve for the Common Trees of Yasuní book. The book is available in Spanish and English 

as a hardbound book in an institutional collaboration with Finding Species, PUCE, and the Natural History Museum of London. The eBook production was facilitated by Finding Species. The Common Trees of Yasuní contains 250 species organized by the morphology of their leaves. The identification keys are easy to use, relying on the vegetative characteristics to identify trees without having had prior training in botany. The high-resolution scientific quality photographs exhibit the key characteristics of each species making it an easy-to-use field guide in a complex environment. Through these photographs, Finding Species details the beauty of the trees of the Ecuadorian Amazon.Yasuní Biosphere Reserve is in the Ecuadorian Amazon and is known as the most biodiverse place on Earth (Global Conservation Significance of Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park published in the

journal PlosOne). More trees grow in a single hectare (2.47 acres) of upland rainforest in Yasuní —655 species—than in the continental US and Canada combined. In 25 hectares, the number of tree species rises to 1,100. "In just one hectare in Yasuní, there are more tree, shrub, and liana (woody vines) species than anywhere else in the world," explains lead botanist, Gorky Villa, of Finding Species. Botanists, photographers, and the indigenous Huaorani collaborated to find, identify, photograph, preserve, and document the common trees of Yasuní in this first volume. The result is a rich blend of knowledge of two worlds, Western science and the Huaorani. Finding Species is in search of funds to produce the book in the Huaorani language and

future volumes as there are countless species to describe and discover. Proceeds of The Common Trees of Yasuní book will be donated to Finding Species.