This national park is made up of a mosaic of diverse floodplain habitats, bordered by rivers and a ridge of limestone hills. The Palo Verde area is subject to seasonal floods of great magnitude due to its lack of natural drainage. This produces a greater ecological diversity-between 12 and 15 habitats have been identified.
These habitats include salt and fresh water lakes and swamps, grasslands with black mangroves, mangrove swamps, pastures, lowland stunted forests, wooded savannas and evergreen forests. The most conspicuous species and the one from which the park takes its name is the "palo verde" or horse bean, a leafy bush with its branches and parts of its trunk colored light green. The hills are home to an endemic species of cactus. The lignum-vitae, a tree prized for its wood and in imminent danger of extinction, is also found here.
Palo Verde's natural water system has created an environment capable of supporting one of the largest concentrations of waterfowl and wading birds, both native and migratory, in the country and, in fact, in all of Central America. The forests are the nesting grounds of the endangered jabiru and home to the only colony of scarlet macaws in the Dry Pacific.
Some of the most abundant mammals are the howler and white-faced monkeys, white-nosed coati, white-tailed deer, tree squirrel and porcupine. Crocodiles up to five meters long have been sighted in the Tempisque River.
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