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.
Documenting wetlands ecosystems and plant biodiversity of Guatemalan, Mexican and Belizean Savannas, tasistales, cibales
Reports on the Savannas of Guatemala
The FLAAR (USA) and FLAAR MESOAMERICA teams have been searching for, finding, hiking to previously undocumented savannas in Peten. We have researched and investigated the biodiversity of these seasonally inundated ecosystems, especially flora, and fauna. On this page we present a series of FLAAR Reports and videos on examples of these savannas. You can download them down here.
Bibliographies on Flora inside the Savanna of Guatemala area
We have managed to identify different species in the area, so with that information we created several bibliographies dedicated to different species:
Bibliography on Savannas of Guatemala, Belize and Mexico
https://www.maya-ethnobotany.org/savannas-of-guatemala-belize-and-mexico.php
Emotional Video of Nicholas as he first experiences the White Spider Lily Savanna (PNLT Savanna #10)
Also, through the field trips, the capable team of photographers has managed to take amazing and stunning footage of the far corners of the savanna. You can look and them also right here.
Today we wish to share the video of “Dr Nicholas” (Hellmuth) entering for the first time a grassland savanna never studied by any geographer, ecologist or botanist that we are aware of.
This was filmed by Boris Llamas and Andrea Bocamonte of FLAAR Mesoamerica and produced by Camila Morales of anima.works and expanded by video production specialist Sofia Monzon (who worked with FLAAR and with FLAAR Mesoamerica many past years).
Get to know the biodiversity hidden in the Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo National Parks, starting with the Mysterious Island of Thalia geniculata in the savannah east of Nakum.
During our November expedition to the Maya Biosphere Reserve we made a documentation tour of this site.
We thank the owners and staff of Ecolodge El Sombrero (Laguna Yaxha, Petén) who provide their comfortable rooms and Italian restaurant so that our field research and photography team can recover from each trip. In addition, we appreciate the storage and transportation services that they provide as part of an alliance that we have formed. Make your reservation to meet them at www.elsombreroecolodge.com
Vertical video showing the habitat of Acoelorraphe wrightii tasiste palm savannas. Locally these are called a tasistal. The team of FLAAR (USA) and FLAAR Mesoamerica (Guatemala) have a 5-year (2021-2015) permit with CONAP to continue our earlier Aug-2018-July 2019 field work of flora, fauna and wetlands ecosystems of Parque Nacional Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo (PNYNN). The new permit is for the entire Reserva de la Biosfera Maya, 21,206 square kilometers of the Peten area of Guatemala.
The hillside and bajo forests of the Maya Lowlands are well known: now you can learn about the forgotten savannas that the Classic Maya had available for thousands of years.
Experience seeing tasiste palm savannas and the seasonally inundated bajo forests of the Mayan area of Reserva de La Biosfera Maya, Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre by FLAAR drone pilot Haniel Lopez.
This part of the remote rain forests of Peten, Guatemala has NEVER been shown in video before.
Video documents the destructive fires that damage fragile tasiste palm habitats in the Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre area of the Reserva de La Biosfera Maya, Peten, Guatemala.
These savanna areas of solid palms (solid palms instead of solid grass) are the focus of FLAAR field work research in Guatemala the recent three years. This video, by Edwin Solares, FLAAR Mesoamerica, shows the team in the remote savannas on April 2, 2022.
Updated April 19, 2022 First posted April 5, 2022 Text and reports by Nicholas Hellmuth
