Try turning 1.5 acres of bare ground into jungle in six months – no short order for a Landscape Architect. Designing it to withstand the destructive powers of bears, monkeys and birds just added to the headache.

Yet, amid the commotion of plumbers, carpenters, painters, electricians, welders and concrete workers, Sun Bear Forest has been transformed from a Landscape Architect’s nightmare to a tropical animal’s dream home.

More than 5,000 individual plants have been strategically selected and placed in a lush garden patterned after a true rain forest of Southeast Asia. While much of the greenery is young and will take several years to reach full growth, many trees and shrubs are mature specimens that already create a living canopy of foliage above the exhibit complex.

The new San Diego Zoo forest is designed to fill three distinct layers, which in the wild serve as three distinct habitats for various tree-dwelling animals. An upper canopy, medium canopy, and understory are formed by different plants woven together – figuratively and actually – by a variety of climbing vines.

The upper canopy is formed by the spreading leaves and branches of palms and ficus trees. King palms, wine palms and fishtail palms, some already 25 feet high, will reach 40-50 feet by maturity. Ficus trees throughout the exhibit area, like the rustyleaf fig and the cluster fig, will attain 35 feet; and a huge ficus radulina, now 40 feet tall, is only half its eventual size. The ficus radulina stands in the center of the lion-tailed macaque exhibit, with its trunk thrusting through the mesh, branches spreading like an umbrella over the primates below.

The medium canopy includes several different types of trees that grow only 10-20 feet tall. Camphor trees, banana trees, bamboo palms, hemeracalus and rodomachi help construct this level. A rare, triangulartrunked palm, neodipsis decariei, and thickets of beechey bamboo do double-duty as medium canopy and visual screens along the walkways.

The understory is a magnificent mix of ferns, shrubs, flowers and ornamental grasses. Over 2,500 ginger plants provide color and aroma throughout the exhibit area. New Guinea impatiens, several types of rhododendrons, and Michealea alba (a large shrub with dramatic white flowers) brighten the area as well. Cissus anarctica, Bomantia gradiflora (a vining ficus), and other vines are found in the understory. From here they rise into the higher levels, screening key lines of sight and softening the contours of walls along the viewing path.

The animal exhibits are planted to match the surrounding environment. Artificial trees and vines have been installed for the climbing pleasures of sun bears and lion-tailed macaques, but most of the plant material inside the enclosures is real. The sun bears walk on deep-rooted fescue turf, and Rangoon creeper and shrubs also grow throughout their environment.

The macaques enjoy, besides their large ficus tree, a turf of eight different mixed grasses, various vines and shrubs, and sugarcane. Keepers know that the foraging animals will consume at least part of the sugarcane, and conduct other “re-landscaping” activities during their occupancy of the exhibits, but this is regarded as sacrifice to the learning process. A list of plant names has been provided to researchers who will compile ethograms, or behavioral assessments, of the macaques in their new home.

The observers will note what the monkeys destroy, when they destroy it, and how they go about the job.

Small trees, shrubs and vines have been 3 planted within the bird exhibit, with the heaviest foliage placed at the back of the enclosure, where the birds roost and nest in relative privacy.

At the lower end of the Sun Bear Forest trail is a Bo tree (Ficus religiosa). As its Latin name indicates, the Bo tree figures into Eastern religion. It was beneath a Bo tree that Buddha achieved enlightenment, and bells placed in Buddhist temples have tongues shaped like the unusual “tails” found on the leaves of this tree. In nature, the tails serve as an irrigation aid, directing rain caught by the leaves downward, where it pools to water the tree.

The hillside behind this exhibit complex is covered with a variety of ficus, banana and eucalyptus trees. All of these are harvested for fresh leaves, which will be placed within the animal enclosures to supplement the diets of the macaques and sun bears.

From the Bo Tree that sheltered Buddha to the Air Potato, a yam that grows on trees, the plants of Sun Bear Forest are an unusual and varied lot.

Following are some highlights from among the more than 5,000 green and leafy living things taking up root in the San Diego Zoo’s replica of an Asian rain forest.

Lemon Grass (Cymbopogom citratus)
Lemon Grass is a favorite herb, valued for its light, citrus aroma. It is native to tropical Asia, where it has long been used in perfumes, oils, medicines and cooking.

Candlenut Tree (Aleurites moluccana)
These trees’ oily seeds are an eastern alternative to candles. Native peoples throughout Asia dry candlenut seeds, string them on the midribs of palm fronds, and burn them for light.

Wine Palm (Caryota urens)
Want a drink? How about a cool, refreshing wine palm toddy? If you were in India, you might accept. The drink, actually called “arrack”, is fermented from a crude sugar made from boiled down wine palm.

Air Potato (Dioscorea bulbifera)
Air potatoes are a kind of yam. While many yams are starchy roots that grow in the ground, these chestnut-sized potatoes grow between the leaves and the stems.

Beechey Bamboo (Bambusa Beecheyana)
People in India and China mix bamboo flowers, bamboo seeds, and honey into a mixture they eat like cereal. They also eat bamboo shoots?EUR??,,????'??+boiled and pickled as a vegetable, or sugared as a sweet.

Heavenly Blue (Thunbergia grandiflora)
Native people of Malaya make two remedies from the leaves of this beautiful, blue-flowered climber. They treat stomach ailments with the leaf extract, and spread mashed, heated leaves over skin sores.

Dwarf Cavenish Banana (musa acuminata)
Where’s the fruit? In warm months, you might see a large, red banana flower drooping down from among the banana leaves. In about 7 months, the flower develops into ripe bananas.

Banana Shrub (Michelia figo)
Micheiia flowers are especially valued for their scent. In China, the flower petals are distilled to extract a fragrant oil that is used as a perfume for hair.

Java Plum (Syzigium cumini)
Hindu people plant Java plum trees outside their temples to honor Krishna, the second god of the Hindu trinity.

Pomelo (Citrus grandis)
Pomelo fruit looks like a grapefruit, but can be as big as a man’s head. Its skin is aromatic and extremely thick.

Timber Bamboo (Bambus oldhamii)
Bamboo are grasses, just like wheat, corn, and backyard crabgrass. Unlike the other grasses, bamboo can grow as tall as a ten-story building.

Cluster Fig (Ficus racemosa)
In India, people eat the plentiful fruits of the cluster fig for breakfast – but not as fresh fruit. First they dry the fruit and then grind it into a powder that is malted and roasted.

White Chempakav (Michelia alba)
In the island country of Java, medicines are made from the fragrant flowers of the Michelia alba tree. For example, a woman who has suffered a miscarriage is treated with a tea brewed from the flower petals.

Bo Tree (Ficus religiosa)
According to tradition, Buddha became incarnate in the shade of this sacred tree.

Variegated Shell-Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet variegata)
This ginger has beautiful white flowers that look like polished seashells. Though native to southeastern Asia, the flowers are used in Hawaii to make leis, Hawaiian flower necklaces.

Mango (Mangifera indica)
Delicious mangos are eaten throughout tropical eastern Asia where they grow. The soft, juicy flesh is deep gold and aromatic; the flavor sweet and tangy. Mango bark is used as a yellow dye for silk and cotton.

Ginger (Zingiber officinale)
You may know ginger as a spicy, pungent root used for cooking. But in China, ginger is also used to treat stomach aches, diarrhea, nausea, bleeding, rheumatism, poisonous snakebites, baldness, and toothaches.

Red Cedar (Acrocarpus frax~nifolius)
Red cedar trees are the largest timber trees in India, reaching heights up to 200 feet.

Taro Root (Colocasia esculenta)
Taro is perhaps best known as a staple in the diet of Hawaiian peoples, but Filipino and Japanese people eat it as well. They use the roots to make poi, a traditional gruel. They boil the leaves and eat them like spinach.

Sun Bear Forest is a step toward the San Diego Zoo of the 21st Century. The 1.5 acre, $3.5 million rain forest replica is the third in a string of construction projects that will eventually rebuild and reorganize the world famous Zoo into 10 distinct climate zones. Animals and plants will be grouped accordingly in this bioclimactic design.

In 1988, the Zoo opened Tiger River, a 3-acre tropical rain forest zone filled with 10 exhibits featuring tigers, tapirs, crocodiles, argus pheasants, mouse deer, fishing cats and other animals, surrounded by tree ferns, bamboo thickets and thousands of plants.

In 1986, the African Rock Kopje enclosures debuted the bioclimactic themes with realistic simulations of rocky outcroppings in the Serengeti Plains as homes for klipspringers, hyrax, birds, lizards and plants of the African grasslands.

Another section of the rain forest zone is next on the architects’ agenda. Scripps Aviary, a sprawling walk-through flight cage built in the late 1920s, will be refurbished and upgraded for a 1990 reopening. Construction begins immediately on new habitats for gorillas, pygmy chimpanzees and assorted reptiles and birds of the African rain forests. That project is scheduled to finish in 1991.

“Renewing our entire Zoo is an extensive and expensive undertaking,” said Douglas G. Myers, the Zoo’s executive director. “Many of the facilities that earned the San Diego Zoo its world renown in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s are beginning to show their age. We are challenged to take the state-of-the-art in zoo exhibitry into the 21st Century.”

It may take 20 years and $150 million to rebuild the entire 100-acre zoo, Myers estimated. Funds for the capital improvements come from gifts of members, benefactors and corporations.

As the new zoo evolves, no longer will animals be grouped taxonomically – all snakes and lizards in the Reptile House, all birds in the Birdyard, or all bears in one row of enclosures, for instance. Instead, birds, mammals, reptiles and plants from the same climate zones will be displayed in an area. Zoo designers feel the climate zone arrangement will give visitors a truer impression of nature and provide subtle reminders of the inter-relatedness of plants, animals, weather and terrain.

Rain forest zones will cover the largest area of the new zoo, simply because this critically threatened sector of the earth’s landscape is by far the richest in variety of plant and animal life. Other bioclimactic zones to be built in the San Diego Zoo include seasonal tropical forest, savanna, temperate forest, grassland, montane, taiga, tundra, desert and island zones.

Prominent design motifs involve immersing the visitors in the landscape, creating a mood by appealing to all the senses, eliminating distracting objects and views, and placing visitors in an unfamiliar world in which he or she subconsciously realizes the animals are dominant. Barriers between animals and people are minimized, plants both inside and outside of enclosures are maximized, animals are given opportunities that will stimulate natural behaviors, and visitors are presented with scenes and situations that will spark a sense of discovery.

“The San Diego Zoo needs to continue to be a leader,” Meyers said. “We want San Diegans to be proud of their zoo. We want to incorporate the best abilities of zoos everywhere to educate and inspire our visitors and to contribute to the conservation of the world’s wildlife heritage.”