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.
In Mesoamerica, Cecropia trees are treated as a junk tree, as a large weed. But these guarumo trees are actually super important for the eco-systems where they grow in Guatemala (and neighboring countries).
Guarumo helps get burned out milpas back to a future forest. Guarumo helps reforest other areas which have been bulldozed and destroyed by commercial greed.
Plus, to help document that a guarumo tree is not a giant weed, we will be issuing a Mayan cartoon comic book character staring Guarumo! First edition is in English; then Spanish, and once funding is available, Q’eqchi’ and other Mayan languages.
Plus, guarumo trees provide food for several mammals and for scores of local birds.
So we are creating a photographic reference archive especially on the flowers and fruits of both species: Cecropia obtusifolia and Cecropia peltata. 90% of the web sites which reproduce snapshots do not label the flowers as to whether they are male or female and so we are not finding it easy to caption our photos, but we wanted to at least show we are studying this very important tree, and we hope to gradually help local people to understand it should be appreciated and not treated as an ant-infested weed!
We have been doing field trips to find all the different parts of Guatemala where Plumeria grows out in the forests. Most peer-reviewed journals and monographs on plants of Guatemala list the main areas such as the cacti desert along the Rio Motagua. We have found Plumeria growing among cacti overlooking the Rio Sacapulas.
And this weekend we found Plumeria growing on steep high cliffs overlooking the Rio Polochic parallel to the road between Tucuru and La Tinta, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. No cactus plants anywhere.
2000 years ago Plumeria had many uses among the Maya; and 1000 years ago the Aztec used Plumeria for many purposes as well. Today very few indigenous people use Plumeria except as decoration in church-related ceremonies.
3D scanning and 3D imaging are used for many fields. But we at FLAAR Reports are always looking for innovative ways to employ 3D technology.
For example, the team at FLAAR has been working on doing 3D images of all kinds of plants and trees: cacao (chocolate) pods and entire trees. A lot of this work was accomplished by Andrea Mendoza, who attended SIGGRAPH 2015 with Melanny Celeste Quinonez. This year two other Assistant Review Editors will attend both the conferences and the expo in July.
Our purpose is to explain to the world that SIGGRAPH is a great place for students to attend. Everyone at FLAAR Reports is bi-lingual or tri-lingual, but there are plenty of Spanish speaking attendees every day at SIGGRAPH.
Conferences are five educational days, 24-28 July, Anaheim, California.
SIGGRAPH exhibition is 26-28 July.
There are various web sites, one is www.s2016.siggraph.org. We hope to see you there in July.
There are many species of this tree in different eco-systems of Guatemala. One or more species are common throughout El Peten (which you can see in Parque Nacional Tikal, the Lake Yaxha park, Seibal (Ceibal) archaeological park, etc.
It’s tough to live in Guatemala City, 1500 meters above sea level, with a view of three volcanoes (with one erupting every week or so). The only time we see snow is to watch TV about blizzards hitting US cities. Here we have butterflies, friendly stingless bees (yes, honey bees with no stingers), hummingbirds every day, and lots of flowers.
Last week we noticed that a vine had climbed up our Ceiba pentandra tree (higher than a three-story building even though less than 10 years old!). This vine had orange flowers. Within a week this vine was flowering directly in front of my desk (tough view).
We believe this is Senecio confusus, Mexican Flame Vine (good to attract monarch butterflies). It is used as a traditional medicine by the Mayan and related people as treatment of strokes and muscle aches.
On the other side of the house we have a plant with tiny purple flowers. This is Eupatorium pycnocephalum, used medicinally for stomach pains (including for birth).
Eupatorium pycnocephalum, photographed at our garden.
