When time and funding permit, each flower (each plant species) will have its own page, and its own PDF, and eventually its own PPT so that professors and students have plenty of material on Guatemala (and Honduras, etc) to study.
Heliconia adflexa, Coban, Guatemala, Hotel Monja Blanca, FLAAR, by Nicholas Hellmuth
This space is for flowers we have recently found and photographed.
Water lilies surround Crocodiles in Late Classic Maya Art
Posted May 31, 2023
I estimate there are more water lily flowers in the 5th through 9th centuries than all other flowers combined. Second most popular flower in Maya art would be 4-petalled flowers of many different species of often water-related plants; #3 might be the Fleur de Lis, sometimes a Pseudobombax ellipticum or Pachira aquatica or composite). But water lily flowers, water lily seed pods, and water lily pads are very very common.
This lecture is July 27, 2023, in the Universidad Francisco Marroquin, organized by the Museo Popol Vuh, by MPV curator Camilo Luin. Lots of other lectures by epigraphers and other iconographers for several days. More info and links once July is upon us.
FLAAR can also offer lectures on the iconography of 4-petalled flowers in Classic Maya art.
The water lily of the Maya world, Nymphaea ampla, is the flower most frequently pictured in Classic Maya art. We will be showing several water lily Underwaterworld scenes in our July lecture on iconography and herpetology of crocodiles of the Maya Lowlands (Guatemala and surrounding countries).
This plate is a drawing by FLAAR illustrator published by Hellmuth in the mid-1970’s. The drawing has been redone by many other illustrators and posted other in locations. The dancing idealized young Maya man at the left wears a crocodile headdress (he seems to point at a waterbird who just caught a fish).
Although the lecture is focused on crocodiles, we will also mention God N’s association with crocodiles (in this scene on a Late Classic polychrome plate the personage inside the shell is not the elderly version; Old God N is by far more common). God N lives inside a conch shell, snail shell, turtle shell, spider web and other surroundings (like a hermit crab).
Lecture abstracts on full-color PowerPoint presentations on jaguars in Maya art, monkeys and other rain forest animals in Maya art; Corbel Vault Architecture of Maya temples and palaces, and dozens of other topics on iconography of deities, monsters of Xibalba, and other topics of Maya archaeology, art, and monumental architecture.
Mangrove remnant along Rio San Pedro (perhaps the most inland growing mangroves in the world)
Posted April 14, 2023
In March of 2023 our expedition team found and documented mangrove trees along Rio San Pedro, and this has been an exciting finding for our team! This mangrove remnant is remarkably unique, as well as its evolutionary history.
Mangroves have bright green leaves and characteristic aerial roots. Photo by: Vivian Hurtado. Rio San Pedro, March, 2023.
We first got to learn about these mangrove remnants through a series of media publications related to a research project in Mexico (this is Aburto-Oropeza et al. 2021’s study which will be cited later on this note). The researchers of this project located and sequenced various mangrove populations scattered inland throughout the Yucatan peninsula, including some important remnants in the basin of Rio San Pedro. Moreover, some of the highlights of this study include the documentation of a mangrove forest that is located 170 km inland from the Atlantic ocean.
Given that the researchers also mentioned the existence of isolated mangroves in the Guatemalan portion of Rio San Pedro, we decided to start investigating this topic. In that sense, we were able to find that the presence of mangroves in this area had already been discussed in at least two publications, one by Bestelmeyer and Alonso (2000) and the other by Castellanos (2006). We also looked at satellite images of this area, and we found that most of the river's basin is already deforested. So the only chances of finding mangroves would be by asking local people and navigating the river.
Mangroves have bright green leaves and characteristic aerial roots. Photo by: Vivian Hurtado. Rio San Pedro, March, 2023.
Later on, by the request of Mirtha Cano (biologist and administrator of one of the protected biotopes located next to Rio San Pedro) we planned an expedition to Rio San Pedro and Rio Escondido for another documentation project. However, to make the most of this expedition, we started asking local people if we could find the mangroves of Rio San Pedro. And indeed, we found that it was possible to get to some mangrove trees by navigating up river from El Naranjo village, so we did the proper planning to look for the mangroves in the same expedition.
Later on the actual trip, the expedition team did find the mangrove trees, and photographed them. Since then, the team has learned a lot about these mangroves' history and ecology. According to Aburto-Oropeza et al. (2021) these mangrove remnants first got here 120,000 years ago, because of a higher level of the sea. Nowadays, they still survive here because there is a high concentration of calcium in Rio San Pedro. If it was not for the leakage of calcium to the river (from the karstic soils that surround it), these mangroves wouldn't still be growing here. In fact, mangroves are coastal species that grow only on brackish water, with mangroves of Rio San Pedro being an amusing exception.
Mangrove propagule (still attached) collected at Rio San Pedro. Photo by: Vivian Hurtado. Rio San Pedro, March, 2023.
We are currently finishing a PDF report with the photographs of this expedition and helpful data that may assist you, if you are a student or researcher, to learn more about these remarkable mangroves. We hope that our work and the documentation we are doing with these mangroves can encourage you, and the local authorities to study and protect these mangroves. As mentioned before, most of the river basin is deforested and only a few vegetation patches persist, so the risk of losing these mangroves is alarmingly high.
We are planning a second expedition to this area later on this month and we encourage you to look in the next few weeks for the PDF on these mangroves and other ecosystems of the same area.
Bibliography on mangroves from Rio San Pedro
ABURTO-Oropeza, O. BURELO-Ramos, C., EZCURRA, E. EZCURRA, P. HENRIQUEZ, C., VANDERPLANK, S. and F. ZAPATA
2021
Relict inland mangrove ecosystem reveals Last Interglacial sea levels. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 2021. Vol. 118, No. 41. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2024518118
Note: This is Aburto-Oropeza et al. ambitious study. They even found another mangrove species, Conocarpus erectus, in the inland mangrove associations from Tabasco, as well as other plant species from coastal mangrove associations.
Over 190,000 unique hosts read this FLAAR website on plants of Guatemala
Posted Jan 18, 2023
Alejandra Valenzuela, web statistics, FLAAR Mesoamerica, has provided the statistics. The average-per-month January through October is about 14,000. November and December the number almost doubled (to 27,967 in December). Total for the year is about 190,000.
We continue to receive appreciation from readers for the high-quality photographs of the FLAAR team and the FLAAR Reports that we issue.
Haematoxylum brasiletto flowering in bosque seco area of Guatemala
Posted January 22, 2023
At km 93, from El Rancho northward (heading for Coban), there is Haematoxylum brasiletto in full flowering mode this week.
This tree grows surrounded by cactus plants.
In Peten the palo de campeche grows in seasonally inundated swamps. But palo de tinto flowers in a different month.
We use the route through Alta Verapaz to drive from the FLAAR Mesoamerica office to accomplish field work in the PNYNN and PANAT areas of the RBM, Peten.
Lots of friendly bees sucking nectar out of the pretty yellow flowers.
Happy Holidays from Nicholas and the FLAAR team
Posted Dec 21, 2022
Eating chocolate from Theobroma cacao of Guatemala is very healthy. Over a thousand years ago one kind of chile was used so often as a flavoring that still today it is called chile-chocolate. So we wrote our holiday greeting with chile-chocolate on top of cacao seeds (sometimes called cacao beans).