One of our long-range goals is to find all wetlands plants of the Maya world that are edible. Week after week our team hikes to remote areas or travels in boats far up rivers never traversed by any botanist or ecologist.
So far we have found three Hibiscus plants or which one is edible for sure and we estimate the other two are also.
Our first discussion was on Hibiscus furcellatus, a Hibiscus that is common in several seasonally inundated savannas of Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre (PNLT), Reserva de la Biosfera Maya (RBM), Peten, Guatemala.
Cochlospermum wrightii in the Zacapa area of Guatemala, in the sun between Crescentia alata trees. Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth.
Cochlospermum wrightii (A.Gray) Byng & Christenh is the accepted name, achiote family. The Cochlospermum wrightii that we saw are ground herbs (not yet even a foot high) but their relative, Cochlospermum vitifolium can grow easily to 3 meters height as a shrub and often over a dozen meters as a tree.
We have seen and photographed Cochlospermum vitifolium in dry areas along highway CA9 from Guatemala City towards El Rancho but this was the first time we stopped to photograph Cochlospermum wrightii. When in flower Cochlospermum vitifolium is easy to notice and we have photographed this in several areas of Guatemala in the recent decade.
Plumeria rubra are listed by botanists often as “tree or shrub.” Half the wild Plumeria rubra that I see across biodiverse ecosystems in different parts of Guatemala are large shrubs or small trees. But on June 6th, 2023, I happened to see the largest flor de mayo tree that I have yet found outside of a cemetery (often in burial areas the trees are more protected so grow taller with thicker trunks).
Uphill from Ipala, Chiquimula department of Guatemala. Over 90% of the Plumeria rubra out in the wild across Guatemala grow on steep hills or even stone cliffs (because these areas are not chopped down for slash-and-burn milpa agriculture). When you Click to Enlarge you may notice lots of epiphytic cactus (arboreal cactus that grow up tree trunks and out on the tree limbs).
Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth, June 6, 2023, iPhone 14 Pro Max. FLAAR Photo Archive has over 30 TB (yes TERAbytes) of digital photos of flora and fauna of Guatemala, Central America.
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).
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.
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.
