Found more palm species in Lagunita Creek nature reserve than expected. CONAP together with FUNDAECO do a great job maintaining the nice hiking trails and providing guide service.
The team of the Municipio of Livingston kindly provided a boat and guide to take us to this nature research near the mouth of the Rio Sarstun (so south of the Peten-Belize border, with Amatique Bay to the east).
When you are hiking the trails at Lagunita Creek nature reserve you will find many of the plants of the Mayan world. I found more different species of palms here than in other areas that I have visited. Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth, FLAAR Mesoamerica, iPhone Xs, Mar. 12, 2020.
If you are a botanist, a student of biology, or otherwise like to hike through a Neotropical rain forest, we highly recommend that you visit Lagunita Creek nature reserve.
You can find a boat in the village of Livingston. There is no way to drive or hike to the entrance of this nature reserve; boat is the only access.
On our next visit I would like to spend an entire day at Lagunita Creek, and reserve a second separate entire day for Área Protegida Parque Ecoturístico Tapon Creek that is a few minutes away (the ecosystems here are different even though not far away).
But if your schedule is tight, visit both Lagunita Creek and Tapon Creek on the same day (as we did our first visit, since in advance I had no idea of the biodiversity we would find in both areas).
We thank Ing. Daniel Esaú Pinto Peña, Alcalde of Livingston (Izabal, Guatemala) for the cooperation provided by him and the team of the Municipio de Livingston. We thank Edwin Mármol Quiñonez, Coordinación de Cooperación de Livingston (Izabal, Guatemala), for introducing our team and our project potential to the Alcalde.
We appreciate the cooperation of Juana Lourdes Wallace Ramírez, Asistente Administrativo, Coordinación de Cooperación de Livingston, for organizing the day-by-day transportation and logistics for our team. Lourdes also accompanies us each day of each field trip.
In theory there may be up to 35 palm species in the Caribbean area of the Municipio de Livingston, Izabal, Guatemala. Our field trips will seek to find and accomplish high resolution photography of as many palm species as possible. So far we have found the easy ones: escoba palm (fronds used to make brooms), tasiste that like lots of water nearby (here called pimientillo), bayal (palm that's a spiny vine), and thousands of corozo palm. Lots of kala which looks identical to a small guano palm; but kala is neither a palm nor even related.
No pharmaceutical companies 2000 years ago. The Maya, Xinca (and Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, etc) had plenty of medicine from local plants. Much of our modern medicine also comes from plants, of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and EU (of course most is now chemicals, manufactured in factories).
This attractive white lily, Eucharis bouchei, is the wild native Guatemalan relative of the garden plant Eucharis amazonica from Peru). Eucharis bouchei has medicinal properties. Would be helpful if more modern medicine could learn from the over 500 native medicinal plants of the Maya (potentially over 600). FLAAR Mesoamerica notes every medicinal plant that are teams find. We will be exploring remote areas of the Municipio of Livingston later in March.
Pokomchi Mayan plant scout Norma Estefany Cho Cu found these Eucharis bouchei lily flowers in the forests near the home of her parents, Caserio Chilocom, Municipio Santa Cruz Verapaz, Alta-Verapaz, Guatemala, on Feb. 25, 2020. FLAAR (USA) provided a Google Pixel 3XL smart phone camera to FLAAR Mesoamerica (Guatemala) so the plant scouts can take better photos out in the field.
Last week the Alcalde and his team of Livingston took us around to get to learn more about the bio-diversity of flora and fauna of this Caribbean part of Guatemala, Central America. Having been visiting Guatemala since age 17 (and visiting rain forests and Maya ruins of Mexico since age 16), in the circa 59 years of experience in Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Peten, and Alta Verapaz (plus dozens of other areas: Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador), I was frankly amazed and impressed by the Neotropical ecosystems of the Municipio of Livingston: karst geology (so lots of caves like in much of Mesoamerica), rivers, lakes, lagoons, swamps (but also mangrove swamps, not common elsewhere outside of the Pacific Coast). Hills, flatlands, and everything in between.
Even though we had only two days time in Livingston area (plus one day in Morales and two days driving back-and-forth to Guatemala City, we can now sense the potential of Biotope Chocon Machacas CECON-USAC. Wow, plants, mosses, bromeliads, vines, mushrooms, lichens (plus all the living organisms underwater). And Rio Sarstun has even more (that would be our next field trip goal).
My heart is dedicated to Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo (Peten), and the cloud forests of Alta Verapaz have kept me busy for many years of botanical field work. But the Municipio of Livingston is also “one of the most impressive areas for botanical, zoological, and ecological research I can imagine.”
The Alcalde of Livingston, Daniel Esaú Pinto Peña, is developing projects to assist the local Q’eqchi’ Mayan and Garifuna people in his Municipio (Departamento of Izabal, Guatemala). The individual for outreach of these projects is Edwin Mármol Quiñonez, Coordinación de Cooperación de Livingston. He came to visit the headquarters and research facilities of FLAAR Mesoamerica in Guatemala City. Based on what he saw he invited our team of botany and ecology and biology students and photographers to visit Livingston.
Here are 20 photos of flora and fauna just from one small part of Biotopo Chocon Machacas, based on just 2 hours hike. There are HUNDREDS more flowering plants, orchids, etc. to see if you spend more time here (or in the other biodiverse ecosystems of Municipio of Livingston).
There is material for theses in any and every topic you can imagine; material for PhD dissertations, peer-reviewed journal articles. Plus for people around the world who wish to experience photogenic flora and fauna—come visit Livingston ecosystems. We hope to return to the Municipio of Livingston and continue our research for the coming four years (5 to 10 days per month; average of 10 months per year; four years).
In many parts of Mesoamerica (Mexico southward) Xanthosoma robustum roots are considered edible if you cook them. But in much of Alta Verapaz and Peten (Guatemala), the roots are simply considered toxic and not eaten any more since so many modern fruits and vegetables are sold in all the Mayan village markets: carrots, potatoes, etc.
We (FLAAR in USA and FLAAR Mesoamerica in Guatemala) are studying root crops, to significantly improve the helpful 1966 list of edible roots of the Classic Maya by Bennet Bronson. So one of our Q’eqchi’ Mayan plant scouts, Pedro, went to find Xanthosoma robustum near where he lives (several kilometers into the mountains from Senahu, Alta Verapaz). He found an ample area with several hundred Xanthosoma robustum plants alongside the dirt road towards Panzos (to Trece Aguas area, a turnoff from the highway from Rio Polochic up to Senahu).
He said that most of the Xanthosoma robustum plants are chopped down to clear land for milpas or for other agriculture spaces, so you rarely any more can find mature plants. So he said the mature plants with full-sized leaves we will have to do lots more scouting to find. But on the first day of February we at least found one leaf 1.23 length by .81 meters width. Senaida Ba, another of our helpful Q’eqchi’ Mayan plant scouts found a leaf which we measured to be 1.51 by .97 meters.
Xanthosoma robustum leaf 1.51 by .97 meters
Xanthosoma robustum leaf 1.23 length by .81 meters width
Sixty years ago there were mature plants to find full-sized leaves. So the botanical monograph Flora of Guatemala documents Xanthosoma robustum size as: “leaf blades sagittate-ovate, often two meters long but usually shorter,…” (Standley and Steyermark 1958: 360). WOW, we definitely look forward to finding a TWO meter long leaf. We have found leaves of Heliconia mariae much longer (but not as wide as a Xanthosoma leaf).
You can find tasiste palm “trees” either in grassland savannas (we have found a previous undocumented grassland savanna east of Nakum, Peten) or in tasistal ecosystems. In a grassland savanna there are clusters of tasiste trees perhaps every 5 to 20 meters (the rest of the space is grasses with perhaps some Jicara calabash trees or Nance fruit trees).
In a tasistal you can find half a million or more tasiste palms within an area of 300 meters wide by 3 to 5 kilometers long. Here the tasiste trees are literally solid (with only a few centimeters open space between dense clusters of these trees). Jicara and Nance are not as common here, but we have found jicara in each of the two tasistal areas so far (in the Petexbatun area, Sayaxche, Peten, Guatemala).
Since the savannas and tasistal areas are burned by local people almost every year, the tasiste trees tend to be only 2 to 4 or so meters high. So it is no surprise that botanists say “the palms measure up to 4 meters.” (Laderman 1997: 241). Standley and Steyermark estimate their height up to 8 meters for Guatemala (1958: 278).
Behind Hotel Ecologico Posada Caribe, Julian (owner of the hotel) showed us an area with tasiste palm. Since these are protected (not burned each year) they grow taller each year. I estimate there were lots of tasiste here over 9 meters tall and would be worth measuring them to see if any reached 12 meters in height (since if there are large trees around them, they have to grow tall to get sun). In a tasistal it is “solid tasiste” so not many other trees to shade them.
This Acoelorrhaphe wrightii was so tall I had to back away to try to get most of the palm in a single (iPhone Xs) photo. It’s the tree in the back middle of the photo, with the fronds high in the treetops area. Would be helpful to actually measure it since my estimate of “over 9 meters” is a visual calculation.
But either way, the FLAAR team has now documented a height taller than that for the prestigious Flora of Guatemala botanical monograph. Unexpectedly these respected botanists for Guatemala did not list one single solitary tasiste palm for Peten…they document Acoelorrhaphe wrightii only for Alta Verapaz and Izabal (1958: 277-278).
