About every two months (from August 2018 through July 2019) we visit the south shore of Lake Yaxha, the southern area of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo. On each visit we noted lots of the common thin orange parasitic vine wandering around on the ground, searching for plants to visit and suck their life-system. This July, from the boat (kindly provided every month by the park administrators IDAEH and CONAP), I noticed a yellow glow about 10 meters inland from the shore. So I asked the lanchero to go towards the shore so I could step off and inspect the orange color. Turned out it was a series of savanna-like areas with the ground literally covered with this parasitic vine.
This pano was taken with an iPhone Xs. We will be preparing a full report with our dozen panoramas of this area by Dr Nicholas (Hellmuth) plus nice close-up macro photographs by Maria Alejandra Gutierrez.
Since there is a nearly identical vine on our family farm in Missouri (Cuscuta, dodder), and as I have seen the same vine in many areas of Alta Verapaz and above Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, I assumed the identical vine at Yaxha was also a species of the Genus Cuscuta.
There are several species of Cuscuta, in different ecosystems around the Americas. We have Cuscuta growing around bushes that stand out of the water in beaver-dam flooded areas on our family farm in the Missouri Ozarks. From a distance it looks identical to the Cuscuta from Guatemala (except here in Missouri it has adapted to snow and ice during the winter).
There is also lots of Cuscuta around Solola, en route to Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Over the years we have found and photographed many locations with Cuscuta vines in different ecosystems of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. I love the color and thin spaghetti diameter of the vine. The flowers are miniature and pretty. How this vine survives is great reading (just Google it).
But after I learned there is a literally identical parasitic vine named Cassytha filiformis, I spent several days doing research and was surprised to learn that only Cassytha filiformis is found in Belize and Campeche and Peten: not much Cuscuta species in any of these areas. So now I estimate that the thousands of vines at Yaxha are also Cassytha filiformis. As soon as we are back at Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo we will do macro photography and check the odor of the vine: Cuscuta evidently has no odor, but Cassytha filiformis has an easily detectable smell. We are working on a bibliography to show you where to find all this information.
Updated August 28, 2019
First posted July 23, 2019
