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!
Posted Jul 21, 2016
