No pharmaceutical companies 2000 years ago. The Maya, Xinca (and Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, etc) had plenty of medicine from local plants. Much of our modern medicine also comes from plants, of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and EU (of course most is now chemicals, manufactured in factories).
This attractive white lily, Eucharis bouchei, is the wild native Guatemalan relative of the garden plant Eucharis amazonica from Peru). Eucharis bouchei has medicinal properties. Would be helpful if more modern medicine could learn from the over 500 native medicinal plants of the Maya (potentially over 600). FLAAR Mesoamerica notes every medicinal plant that are teams find. We will be exploring remote areas of the Municipio of Livingston later in March.
Pokomchi Mayan plant scout Norma Estefany Cho Cu found these Eucharis bouchei lily flowers in the forests near the home of her parents, Caserio Chilocom, Municipio Santa Cruz Verapaz, Alta-Verapaz, Guatemala, on Feb. 25, 2020. FLAAR (USA) provided a Google Pixel 3XL smart phone camera to FLAAR Mesoamerica (Guatemala) so the plant scouts can take better photos out in the field.
Last week the Alcalde and his team of Livingston took us around to get to learn more about the bio-diversity of flora and fauna of this Caribbean part of Guatemala, Central America. Having been visiting Guatemala since age 17 (and visiting rain forests and Maya ruins of Mexico since age 16), in the circa 59 years of experience in Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Peten, and Alta Verapaz (plus dozens of other areas: Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador), I was frankly amazed and impressed by the Neotropical ecosystems of the Municipio of Livingston: karst geology (so lots of caves like in much of Mesoamerica), rivers, lakes, lagoons, swamps (but also mangrove swamps, not common elsewhere outside of the Pacific Coast). Hills, flatlands, and everything in between.
Even though we had only two days time in Livingston area (plus one day in Morales and two days driving back-and-forth to Guatemala City, we can now sense the potential of Biotope Chocon Machacas CECON-USAC. Wow, plants, mosses, bromeliads, vines, mushrooms, lichens (plus all the living organisms underwater). And Rio Sarstun has even more (that would be our next field trip goal).
My heart is dedicated to Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo (Peten), and the cloud forests of Alta Verapaz have kept me busy for many years of botanical field work. But the Municipio of Livingston is also “one of the most impressive areas for botanical, zoological, and ecological research I can imagine.”
The Alcalde of Livingston, Daniel Esaú Pinto Peña, is developing projects to assist the local Q’eqchi’ Mayan and Garifuna people in his Municipio (Departamento of Izabal, Guatemala). The individual for outreach of these projects is Edwin Mármol Quiñonez, Coordinación de Cooperación de Livingston. He came to visit the headquarters and research facilities of FLAAR Mesoamerica in Guatemala City. Based on what he saw he invited our team of botany and ecology and biology students and photographers to visit Livingston.
Here are 20 photos of flora and fauna just from one small part of Biotopo Chocon Machacas, based on just 2 hours hike. There are HUNDREDS more flowering plants, orchids, etc. to see if you spend more time here (or in the other biodiverse ecosystems of Municipio of Livingston).
There is material for theses in any and every topic you can imagine; material for PhD dissertations, peer-reviewed journal articles. Plus for people around the world who wish to experience photogenic flora and fauna—come visit Livingston ecosystems. We hope to return to the Municipio of Livingston and continue our research for the coming four years (5 to 10 days per month; average of 10 months per year; four years).
In many parts of Mesoamerica (Mexico southward) Xanthosoma robustum roots are considered edible if you cook them. But in much of Alta Verapaz and Peten (Guatemala), the roots are simply considered toxic and not eaten any more since so many modern fruits and vegetables are sold in all the Mayan village markets: carrots, potatoes, etc.
We (FLAAR in USA and FLAAR Mesoamerica in Guatemala) are studying root crops, to significantly improve the helpful 1966 list of edible roots of the Classic Maya by Bennet Bronson. So one of our Q’eqchi’ Mayan plant scouts, Pedro, went to find Xanthosoma robustum near where he lives (several kilometers into the mountains from Senahu, Alta Verapaz). He found an ample area with several hundred Xanthosoma robustum plants alongside the dirt road towards Panzos (to Trece Aguas area, a turnoff from the highway from Rio Polochic up to Senahu).
He said that most of the Xanthosoma robustum plants are chopped down to clear land for milpas or for other agriculture spaces, so you rarely any more can find mature plants. So he said the mature plants with full-sized leaves we will have to do lots more scouting to find. But on the first day of February we at least found one leaf 1.23 length by .81 meters width. Senaida Ba, another of our helpful Q’eqchi’ Mayan plant scouts found a leaf which we measured to be 1.51 by .97 meters.
Xanthosoma robustum leaf 1.51 by .97 meters
Xanthosoma robustum leaf 1.23 length by .81 meters width
Sixty years ago there were mature plants to find full-sized leaves. So the botanical monograph Flora of Guatemala documents Xanthosoma robustum size as: “leaf blades sagittate-ovate, often two meters long but usually shorter,…” (Standley and Steyermark 1958: 360). WOW, we definitely look forward to finding a TWO meter long leaf. We have found leaves of Heliconia mariae much longer (but not as wide as a Xanthosoma leaf).
You can find tasiste palm “trees” either in grassland savannas (we have found a previous undocumented grassland savanna east of Nakum, Peten) or in tasistal ecosystems. In a grassland savanna there are clusters of tasiste trees perhaps every 5 to 20 meters (the rest of the space is grasses with perhaps some Jicara calabash trees or Nance fruit trees).
In a tasistal you can find half a million or more tasiste palms within an area of 300 meters wide by 3 to 5 kilometers long. Here the tasiste trees are literally solid (with only a few centimeters open space between dense clusters of these trees). Jicara and Nance are not as common here, but we have found jicara in each of the two tasistal areas so far (in the Petexbatun area, Sayaxche, Peten, Guatemala).
Since the savannas and tasistal areas are burned by local people almost every year, the tasiste trees tend to be only 2 to 4 or so meters high. So it is no surprise that botanists say “the palms measure up to 4 meters.” (Laderman 1997: 241). Standley and Steyermark estimate their height up to 8 meters for Guatemala (1958: 278).
Behind Hotel Ecologico Posada Caribe, Julian (owner of the hotel) showed us an area with tasiste palm. Since these are protected (not burned each year) they grow taller each year. I estimate there were lots of tasiste here over 9 meters tall and would be worth measuring them to see if any reached 12 meters in height (since if there are large trees around them, they have to grow tall to get sun). In a tasistal it is “solid tasiste” so not many other trees to shade them.
This Acoelorrhaphe wrightii was so tall I had to back away to try to get most of the palm in a single (iPhone Xs) photo. It’s the tree in the back middle of the photo, with the fronds high in the treetops area. Would be helpful to actually measure it since my estimate of “over 9 meters” is a visual calculation.
But either way, the FLAAR team has now documented a height taller than that for the prestigious Flora of Guatemala botanical monograph. Unexpectedly these respected botanists for Guatemala did not list one single solitary tasiste palm for Peten…they document Acoelorrhaphe wrightii only for Alta Verapaz and Izabal (1958: 277-278).
We prepared our Christmas message by writing the words with chile chocolate on top of a bed of cacao beans. We bought these in the Q'eqchi' Mayan markets of Coban, Alta Verapaz, last weekend.
Chile chocolate is a special chile used to flavor Maya cacao drinks. The cacao beans from Theobroma cacao trees are the source of cocoa, used to make chocolate.
Both the Maya, Aztec, Zapotec, Mixtec and everyone else in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, etc. all grew and drank liquids made with cacao. Several dozen plants were used as flavorings. We have worked for many years to find each plant. We did this because the last time I spoke with Yale University professor Michael Coe, he said that if he had time to rewrite his cacao book he would do much more research on all the flavorings. So I accepted this as an inspirational challenge.
This photograph by David Arvy (FLAAR Mesoamerica) shows how thick the tasiste palm are in a tasistal. We estimate, literally, 1 million individual tasiste palms in this one area.
We estimate about 1 million tasiste palm trees are in this one single tasiste savanna (estimated 150 to 200 meters wide by 3 to 5 km long) that we first learned about and visited in October and then last week spent 3 days studying up-close. In local Spanish, any savanna with masses of tasiste palms are called a tasistal.
In distinction, I estimate less than several hundred tasiste palm trees are in the seasonally inundated Savanna East of Nakum (that we discovered from aerial photos and then hiked to twice). This grassland savanna is almost one kilometer wide by two or three kilometers long in size.
The Savanna of 3 Fern Species (that I discovered from aerial photos west of Yaxha and then hiked long distances to reach twice) has only a hundred or so clusters of tasiste palm (Acoelorrhaphe wrightii, called palmetto palm in Belize and Florida). This is the smallest of the three PNYNN area savannas.
In the Savanna adjacent to Naranjo sector of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo (showed to us by Vilma Fialko and Raul Noriega and with Horacio Palacios) we found at most a dozen or so tasiste palms (it we have the opportunity to study this savanna-cibal ecosystem again perhaps we can find at most a hundred tasiste palms).
So a “savanna with tasiste” and a “tasistal savanna” are two totally different ecosystem terms: again, potentially a MILLION tasiste palms in the one tasistal. If funds become available we would like to physically measure and physically map each savanna. Our interest is to find and document plants in areas other than hilltop vegetation, other than hillside vegetation, and other than bajo tinto vegetation (since all these have been studied for decades). Two of the three savannas in PNYNN and the newly discovered tasistal savanna, have, to our knowledge, never previously been published.
It can help archaeologists, ecologists, and other scholars to learn about each distinct kind of ecosystems that were near ancient Maya sites. If agriculture was probably very different 2000 years ago than the slash-and-burn milpa agriculture that is used throughout Mesoamerica today, then potentially the seasonally inundated savannas of Peten surely were utilized by the Classic Maya. This is another reason we are working on making lists of every single plant that is very happy growing in these seasonally inundated flatlands.
