All blooming same day in the ethnobotanical research garden surrounding the office of FLAAR.
We also have the national flower of Mexico in our ethnobotanical garden, Dahlia, but it bloomed in past month.
National flowers of Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala are three different species of orchid. That of Guatemala (Monja Blanca) is endangered so it is not appropriate to take it off a tree to bring to your garden.
Our team of FLAAR is assisted by several Q’eqchi’ Mayan-speaking people in Alta Verapaz and Peten. These “plant scouts” go out in their areas to help us find plants which are on our “would really like to find and photograph list.”
About 7 months ago we found cacao pods for sale by a Q’eqchi’ grandmother in Senahu, Alta Verapaz. These cacao pods had a curved end to them. Unfortunately we do not have her contact info nor do we know where she harvested these atypical pods. So we have asked our plant scouts to see if they can find trees with “curved, pointed” cacao pods.
While six of us from FLAAR Reports were doing research on advanced digital imaging in Shanghai, one of our plant scouts said he found a tree filled with curved cacao pods. This is a large tall tree, but not a Theobroma bicolor (so not pataxte, balamte). This is clearly Theobroma cacao, and we hope specialists in cacao DNA can figure out why these pods have a curved end.
Mayan cacao chocolate curved point pod. Peten, Guatemala
We have also found Theobroma angustifolium in the Costa Sur, but most people suggest this came from Costa Rica by the Spaniards, very quickly after the conquest of Guatemala and Mexico. The curved-ended cacao is absolutely not Theobroma angustifolium.
Plantas Comestibles Nutritivas para Mejorar Significativamente la Dieta y Salud de los Niños en las Zonas Rurales de Guatemala
This conference is made to present the importance of nutrition among Guatemalan children, especially in rural areas, and the health benefits that this can have in the Mayan society.
Amaranth, Amaranthus hypochondriacus, with an insect which may possibly be Brachygastra mellifica, one of the few wasps of Mesoamerica which makes honey. Photographed in Rabinal during Day of the Dead ceremonies, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, 2016.
The diverse eco-systems throughout the Mayan areas of Guatemala and adjacent countries offer much more than just maize, beans, and squash of the traditional milpas. For thousands of years people also ate seeds, leaves, flowers, roots, and even edible vines of plants growing around their homes or in nearby forests.
We at FLAAR Mesoamerica have worked for years to learn what nice edible plants can improve the health of people both in villages and in remote areas. Several Guatemalan botanists and agronomists also have excellent articles and books on these subjects; Dr Cesar Azurdia is one example. When you visit remote areas, you quickly see healthy edible plants which are totally missing from most peer-reviewed journal articles in USA and Europe. And our list of plants to support Mayan families already exceeds all lists produced by the experienced botanist Cyrus Lundell and other Carnegie Institution of Washington scholars of the 1930’s through 1950’s.
Plus we have more documentation on edible aspects, more than in the helpful Standley and Steyermark monographs on flora of Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Belize.
Our goal for 2017 is to seek funding so that we can publish our results, especially in local Mayan languages so that both parents, children, and grandparents, can learn about all the potential healthy edible plants available in Guatemala. Improving health is a crucial goal.
With most of the mature forests being bulldozed for commercial purposes, it is useful to have a list of plants available 2000 years ago. And especially, our goal is to do close-up photography of the flowers to help botanists identify the species.
Nance, which ironically looks almost like jocote fruits. Nance is an edible fruit native to many parts of Mesoamerica and sold in Mayan village markets of Guatemala and other countries. Nance grows on a small to medium sized tree, Byrsonima crassifolia. Nance is mentioned in the Popol Vuh as food of the mythical macaw-like deity.
In addition to publishing scholarly lists, it is also crucial to publish for children, in a style that children’s patience will encourage them to read. Two of us flew to the largest book fair in Latin America (800,000 people attended this book fair in Guadalajara, Mexico). So our team of 15 graphic designers, illustrators and biology students now have lots of ideas how to present the information on healthy local Mayan plant alternatives to entire families. Yes, we also will have PDFs for students and professors and researchers, but it is equally important to give this information to local people, including in schools, in their own Mayan language, and Spanish.
As soon as funds are available, you can look forward to innovative publication on the frankly remarkable diversity of healthy edible plants native to Guatemala for thousands of years.
FLAAR Reports has two divisions; you are now on one of the web sites of the tropical Mesoamerica flora and fauna team. If you are interested in wide-format inkjet printers, we have an entire network to explain this technology: www.wide-format-printers.org
There is also a growing team of illustrators and graphic designers who do educational children’s books (to show the world the remarkable plants and animals of 2000 years of Mayan civilization in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador).
This holiday card shows four different natural actual colorations of jaguars: normal color, rare but occasional white color, “gray” black, and “total black” (often mistakenly assumed to be a black panther).
The gray and black variants are melanistic jaguars, with one or more genes different than the DNA of the traditional jaguar color. Even in the “solid black” jaguar, the spots still exist and can be seen when the feline is swimming and the sun is at the right angle. Yes, felines love water and love to swim (and chase and eat crocodiles and alligators).
To see our newly launched cartoon book web site, look at our www.mayan-characters-value-based-education.org. Here you can see a video of Dr Nicholas interacting with a 350 pound tapir and her spotted baby.
Drawing is by two of our team: university graphic design student Mellany and student intern Maria Josefina, copyright 2016 FLAAR.
The ancient Maya of southern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala had a turkey species totally different than the North American turkey: the turkey of Guatemala is the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata).
We show here two felines getting ready to have their yummy turkey feast (there are five species of felines in Guatemala: jaguar, puma, jaguarundi, ocelot, and margay).
We hope you enjoy our thanksgiving day bird feast humor. Don’t worry, we do not eat wild ocellated turkeys; they are protected species.