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.
Posted Jan 18, 2023
Eating chocolate from Theobroma cacao of Guatemala is very healthy. Over a thousand years ago one kind of chile was used so often as a flavoring that still today it is called chile-chocolate. So we wrote our holiday greeting with chile-chocolate on top of cacao seeds (sometimes called cacao beans).
Posted Dec 21, 2022
Lots of plants are shown sticking out the top of enema jugs. This PowerPoint will show lots of these; it is still a mystery what kinds of plants or plant parts. Plus, what are the Maya sniffing (in the bouquet)?
On Monday evening, Nov 21, 2022, a PowerPoint presentation will be delivered by Nicholas Hellmuth on his research on enemas that started in 1977. This research won the Ig Nobel Prize 2022 for art history for Dr Hellmuth and Dr Peter De Smet. The iconographic aspect has been updated for the November 2022 presentation.
The Mysterious World of Maya Enemas
8 pm EST, 7 PM CT, via ZOOM, via The Aztlander (newsletter) (link is on attached PDF) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89340702821
For zoologists: in addition to the common jaguar, deer, monkeys and other animals (or people in animal costumes) are occasionally present.
For iconographers: this ritual is shown in this PowerPoint much more often than published so far. Women are present in many of the scenes, however they themselves do not receive enemas; the females prepare the men to receive the injection.
For epigraphers: updated study is needed of all the hieroglyphs and symbols associated with the enema jug and participants. The lecture shows dozens of enema jugs. Many of these jugs have hieroglyphs on the jug and other symbols nearby.
For botanists: LOTS of plants were ingredients in the enemas. Peter De Smet has studied this aspect in his PhD and subsequently. I still estimate that lots more plants were added (including possibly cacao). His documentation will be cited in the bibliography. LOTS MORE TO STUDY on the ethnobotanical area and ethnopharmaceutical aspects. Not only what was in the jug, but what was in the other containers used in the ceremonies, and the “bouquets”.
The lecture will be in English but questions can be asked and answered also in Spanish.
Posted Nov 17, 2022
Several months ago, organizers of a Mesoamerica-focused botanical organization wrote FLAAR/FLAAR Mesoamerica to ask if we could provide a PowerPoint presentation on botany of Guatemala at their XXII Congreso Mexicano de Botánica. So we accepted and this weekend two of us (Nicholas Hellmuth and Belén Chacón Paz) fly to Mexico City and then transfer to Puebla. Chacon has been doing her own field work in Izabal on manatee. For FLAAR Mesoamerica she works on our wild native edible foods project.
Pontederia cordata – edible plant – Nov 2021 – Nikon D810 Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth
The slot provided of Sept. 27, 2022, has 15 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for questions-and-answers. I will start to show the plants of different wetlands ecosystems of the eastern half of the Municipio de Livingston, Izabal, Guatemala. Then the rest of the lecture will be on what wild native plants we have found in wetlands of the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya (RBM) of Peten area of Guatemala. We will focus on wetlands of PNYNN, PNLT, and La Gloria concession area of Municipio San Jose. Wetlands of PANAT we will initiate in October, so that would be for a future update.
Pontederia cordata – edible plant – Nov 2021 – Nikon D810 Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth
Our PPTx has all high-resolution digital photos from aerial cameras and ground level panoramas plus macro close-ups of flowering plants. FLAAR specializes in digital photography so we wish to show to hundreds of capable botanists at this event how it helps to have digital photography equipment (so not just a point-and-shoot camera).
Pontederia cordata – edible plant – Nov 2021 – Nikon D810 Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth
Posted September 22, 2022
During the recent ten years I have never seen so many Angel’s Trumpet flowers in our garden on a single day. Each of the clusters of these small trees is shimmering in pendant flowers of Brugmansia species. You can find these in thousands of gardens all over Guatemala: white, yellow, or pink flowers. Although I prefer to have wild flowers that are native, so far we have not found any native Datura to transplant to our garden. Datura flowers often stand up; Brugmansia flowers always hang straight down.
We have yellow flowers and white flowers; I show the yellow ones here. We thank Dr Miguel Torres for sharing cuttings of Brugmansia from his garden outside Antigua Guatemala.
The last three weeks it has rained almost every day; then came the annual canicula (a one week period of pure sun with no rain or heavy cloud cover). So this is probably what encouraged so many to flower.
Local bees absolutely love these flowers, but humans should not sniff, snort, swallow or otherwise use these flowers to eat or even to taste.
Written by Nicholas Hellmuth
Posted July 3, 2022
While driving the 40km route to one of the furthest savanna ecosystems in the forestry concession “La Gloria” (Reserva de Biosfera Maya, Petén), we found what we think to be Bignonia binata (also known as bejuco de ajo) flowers. The flowers were emerging from the trunk of the plant, near the ground.
On May 6, at 13:56 pm our team was driving through some of the most well conserved forests in Petén when Sergio, who is part of the team, saw a few purple flowers emerging near the ground. At that moment, he thought that they were terrestrial orchids. Nevertheless, we still had a long route to travel (in order to find more savanna ecosystems that day), and we didn’t stop, so he left a mark in the GPS.
Sony A1, 90mm lens. May 6, 2022. Photographer: Edwin Solares.
The next day, Teco (our local guide) decided to stop and check the same flowers. He said that he had seen the flowers the previous day, and he wanted to have a better look to check what they could be. That’s when we all noticed that they seem to be “bejuco de ajo” flowers, but they were emerging directly from the trunk, a few centimeters above the ground.
Although we are not still sure about the species, given that there were not any leaves growing at least 10 meters above the ground, we suspect that this plant might be Bignonia binata. This vine is pretty common in Petén and it is difficult not to spot it because it gets huge amounts of bright pink flowers. We have actually found it flowering massively along the roads of Paso Caballos.
What we hadn’t seen before is axilar flowers that emerged from the trunk, a few centimeters above the ground. In this regard, the plant we found was a massive liana that scrambled through the vegetation to reach the tall, perhaps 25m high, canopy. As well, it didn’t have any leaves or flowers that we could spot or photograph with any of the long range lenses that we had at the moment. For that same reason, the two inflorescences that we did get to photograph near the ground not only intrigued us, but also let us identify the species. It would be interesting to do more research on which pollinators inhabit this lower portion of the forest (and for that reason, could pollinate these flowers), and on how this individual plant developed flowers near the ground as a mechanism to attract such pollinators.
Sony A1, 90mm lens. May 6, 2022; 11:35am. Photographer: Edwin Solares.
Botanical description: Bignonia binata belongs to the BIGNONIACEAE family. It is a vining herb with secondary growth or commonly called "woody". Its opposite compound leaves, with simple tendrils. Its inflorescence is a termile fascicle with 3 white to purple flowers.
It flowers mainly in April, May, June and July and bears fruit in May, July and August. It generally grows on the shores of rivers, lakes and wetlands, entangling itself in trees if it is around it and is distributed from Mexico to Argentina. (Ochoa, Moreno, Jiménez, Ramon, Muñiz & Haas. 2017)
| Kingdom | Plantea |
| Phylum | Tracheophyta |
| Division | Magnoliophyta |
| Class | Magnoliopsida |
| Order | Lamiales |
| Family | Bignoniaceae |
| Genius | Bignonia |
| Species | Bignonia binata |
Written by Victor Mendoza & Sergio Jerez
Posted July 1, 2022
