We at FLAAR institute are studying tobacco of the Maya and Aztec. As part of our project we are raising tobacco plants (not to smoke ourselves but to appreciate the natural beauty of their flowers).
Tobacco and the various other leaves used by the Maya of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Mexico, and El Salvador are a traditional indigenous cultural feature of importance in their medicine and religion.
Tobacco red night black background Westcott photo by Sofia Monzon.
Plus most of the ingredients of Maya and Aztec snuff and cigars have gorgeous flowers. Although I do not smoke myself already at age 19 I had discovered a Maya vase showing a person smoking a cigar (a 9th century vase in the Tomb of the Jade Jaguar which I discovered while a student at Harvard doing archaeological work for the University of Pennsylvania Museum at Tikal, El Peten, Guatemala).
Plus while doing research in the archives of Sevilla, Spain and Guatemala CIty, on the Spanish documents describing the Cholti Lacandon Maya cigars I learned more about this venerable tradition.
In other words, it is important to understand the natural beauty associated with tobacco and its several thousand years association with the advanced cultures of prehispanic Mesoamerica.
A lot of botanical research tends to be done in the "Maya area" of Peten. Yet over the last year we have found that Izabal, and adjacent Alta Verapaz, offer considerable diversity of eco-systems to allow finding lots of the utilitarian plants which we seek.
Bixa orellana, the seed of this plant is used in our day to flavor foods, the Mayans used to make chocolate as a flavoring too, photographed by Nicholas Hellmuth.
Our goal is to locate, and photograph (when flowering or fruiting) as many of the plants in our list of utilitarian plants of the Mayan people.
We will be spending the coming week in Izabal, starting with the Frutas del Mundo facilities about 20 minutes before Rio Dulce. Dwight Carter has developed a great place to do botanical research here.
Christmas week is a great time to study plants in the area around Lake Atitlan. Our focus is edible plants and plants which produce dye for cotton.
We are photographing cotton: they are a tree here. Not a mere bush. Found beautiful examples of sacatinta plant (produces blue dye, like indigo). But the flower is a gorgeous orange.
Nicotiana is the plant of tobaco, but in the Association of Women in botanical colors we learned that they used as colorants for their threads, photograph by Nicholas Hellmuth.
Found Canec flowering and tree tomato at altitudes much higher than Lake Atitlan. Tree tomato looks like a granadilla but is a tomato. It is the size of a normal fruit tree.
It helps to document that the Maya eat many more things than maize, beans, squash, and much more than root crops too. Plus, the diet in every eco-system was different, since some plants grow only at high altitudes.
Crotalaria longirostrata, Chipilin Flower, photographed by Nicholas Hellmuth. Copyright FLAAR 2012
In addition to studying indigenous tropical fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grains of Mesoamerica, we are also doing research on edible leaves (lots more than just spinach-like options).
Last week we were near Mazatenango to donate a set of photographic enlargements of cacao fruit to the local cacao growers association of San Antonio Suchitepequez. When in this area we always select a hotel which has as large a garden as possible, in the hopes of finding Mesoamerican plants in bloom. There is one hotel which has a small milpa in the back, plus two cashew nut trees.
Every month a completely different plant is in full bloom: six months ago it was the cashew trees. Last week it was the chipilin plant, Crotalaria longirostrata. Although it is the leaves which are eaten, I spent my time focusing on the pretty yellow flowers. Later this week we will add an entire web page and photo essay on chipilin flowers.
High-resolution digital photographs of sacred trees and sacred flowers are now on exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, Missouri. These photographs, by Nicholas Hellmuth and Sofia Monzon, show the ceiba tree and flowers of most of the relatives of this sacred tree.
The exhibit continues through to November 18, 2012.
Here are front covers of a whole series of photo-essays on Pachira aquatica. The flower of this or related species is pictured in Classic Maya art of Peten. Research project on all trees of Maya Mesoamerica with conical spines
