We have had a web page on cashew nuts for several years. But when flying from Tehran to Istanbul in early August, the NY Times that they handed out on the Turkish Airlines flight had an article on Pepsi Co. of India and their work with seeking ways to handle the fruit of the cashew apple. Since I have been photographing cashew flowers and cashew apples for many years throughout Guatemala, I thought now that more people know about the cashew apple would be a good time to prepare an introductory bibliography.
Anacardium occidentale, Cashew nut fruit, taken with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, From the Flaar photo Archive. Taken on 2013.
We are finding out all the diverse range of uses of guava, of every part of the plant.
Much to our surprise, it turned out we had a guava tree in our own garden: never knew since the garden is like a thick jungle at times. But when it bloomed, Sofia Monzon took great photos of the flowers.
The genera Passiflora, known commonly as the passionflower. Known by Native Americans since before the time of the Spanish conquest by other names. The first Spanish explorers did not know these plants and began to call "passion fruit" because its fruit reminded them of pomegranate (Punica granatum), a European species. Shortly after, the same Spanish (especially the Catholic missionaries), aided by creative and amazing imagination, suggested that the forms and structures of the flowers were a representation of the passion and suffering of Christ. This religious symbolism was spread over time, until in 1737 the famous Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus decided to use as Passiflora genera name (Tillet 1988 Kugler & King 2004).
According to the religious interpretation of the flower, each party represents some aspect of the crucifixion of Christ:
The crown of filaments: the crown of thorns
The three styles and stigmas: the three nails
The androgynophore: flogging column
The five stamens: the five wounds of Christ on the cross
Leaves: the spears which pierced the side
The glands of the leaves: the 30 pieces of silver that Judas received for betraying Jesus.
Passiflora lingularis, Granadilla
Over time you were adding other aspects and interpretations of history.
These flowers are found in warmer areas, mostly tropics, throughout the world. Passionflower extracts have been classified into several categories of chemical activity: anxiolytic, spasmolytic, hypnotic, sedative, narcotic and anodyne (Ozarko 2001).
In a field expedition, when I was looking species of passionflower, a farmer told me that when people have insomnia uses flowers to sleep. Other people use the flowers in tea or soup to reduce stress and to sleep for many hours without being interrupted.
On this trip I had the opportunity to see P. quadrangularis and P. ligularis in wildlife because we are informally cooperating with Armando Caceres, author of medicinal plants of Guatemala and he provided where the plants are.
Importantly, many pasiflora species growing on non-native Guatemala. For example we have in our garden four species of Passiflora and none is native to Guatemala, belonging to South America.
MacDougal, J. M.
1983 Revision of Passiflora L. section Pseudodysosmia (Harms) Killip emend. J. MacDougal, the hooked trichome group (Passifloraceae). Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Potential to improve diet and health among Mayan communities of Guatemala
Two thousand years ago there were no Paiz or Supermercado La Torre; there were no highways to bring in food in 18-wheeler trucks. Yet there were more millions of Mayan people living in Guatemala than today!
What made it possible to have more people in AD 600 than in AD 2016?
2000 years ago there were hundreds upon hundreds of edible plants used, with different species in each eco-system. Today the agriculture produces primarily maize, beans, squash, and a few other plants: the rest is 3-liter bottles of Cola and junk food in plastic and aluminum bags (which litter every trail to every tiny aldea and communidad in the entire country).
Diabetes is the most common disease (due to consumption of GALLONS of cola since childhood, and all the chemical-laced junk food: sugar, salt, flavorings).
We at FLAAR have spent the last several years making lists of all the edible and utilitarian plants of the Maya. Our list is far more extensive than lists in quoted monographs and scientific peer-reviewed journals. Our “peers” are the over 300,000 people who read our www.maya-ethnobotany.org every year!
If funding is available we would like to make our documentation available to the Mayan people, in their own K’iche, Kaqchiquel, Q’eqchi’, Mam languages, and other Western Highland, Central Highland, and other parts of Guatemala, including Xinca and Garifuna languages.
Underutilized Edible plants of the Mayan world
Sambucus mexicana, Sambucus nigra and Sambucus canadience are synonyms. Blue elderberry. We even have one of the elderberry species on our family farm in the Ozark Mountains of south central Missouri.
Evidently you can also eat the flowers but normally people consume the ripe berries (in jelly or other preparation; you don’t tend to eat them in a bowl like blueberries or raspberries).
Sauco is everywhere, from Central Highlands through Western Highlands
Driving from Guatemala City towards Los Encuentros (turn off to Chichicastenango) you find lots of sauco. Around Quetzaltenango, sauco in almost every field. Plus in many other places in the Central Highlands and Western Highlands, plus in Q’eqchi’ Mayan areas.
It would help to have a project to systematically record precisely in how many eco-systems of Guatemala sauco is common.
Sauco is very common, but usually “wild” and not cultivated
Sometimes you find sauco as a living fence. Other times it is growing around houses, randomly. Usually it is left in fields that are otherwise cut for milpa (so sometimes it is spared from the slash-and-burn Mayan maize cultivation system). But this is an extremely common plant. I would call it a small tree or large bush (botanists will have their preferences).
It blooms for several months, especially May and June. In June you can begin to see the berries but they are not yet ripe until later in the year.
As with many Neotropical plants, parts of toxic even though parts are edible
Scores of plants in Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, etc have edible parts and toxic parts all on the same plant. Sometimes a part of the plant is toxic with young but fully edible when ripe. Other times it’s the other way around. With sauco the berries have to be completely ripe.
Sauco is medicinal throughout Mexico and Guatemala
Francisco Hernandez, already in the 16th century speaks about the medicinal benefits of Sauco (Relaciones Geograficas). In the 17th century Francisco Ximenez mentions the medicinal benefits of sauco.
Sauco also produces a dye colorant
In northern Mexico, among the Coahuilla Indians, sauco is used as a dye colorant for dyeing basketry (Barrows 1967). Sauco also produces a colorant in the Choco area of Colombia (Pino Chala et al 2003). But this is a different plant: Solanum aff. Incomptum. It will be useful to check if Mayan Sauco was used as a dye colorant; it is not listed in the book on dye colorants by Olga Reiche (2014).
Not one Sambucus species is listed for the northern Lacandon Maya in the impressive coverage by Suzanne Cook (2016), so it seems to prefer Highland eco-systems.
Sauco is also beneficial to local wild animals and birds
Sauco berries and leaves are popular food for deer, squirrels, raccoons, opossums and birds. Wild creatures can evidently not be affected by what is toxic to humans (Charlebois et al. 2009: 30-31).
Bibliography
We are preparing a comprehensive bibliography on sauco.
Posted June 10, 2016 after again photographing Sauco in Western Highlands during a long field trip
Plenty of peer-reviewed journal articles on Maya plants of Guatemala
But, we have over 300,000+ readers. So our peers are our over quarter-million readers. We work hard, all year, every year, to provide fresh information coupled with gorgeous high-resolution photographs.
Now we are adding a new series of educational publications featuring humorous illustrations. We provide information on remarkable flowers of plants of Guatemala used by the Mayan people for thousands of years. Most of these plants were also used by the Aztec of Mexico.
These new books are based on the same research we use for our botanical publications but are all illustrated: every page, every fact, every observation, is illustrated: and with humor. Plus we add occasional satire.
Although school children would learn huge amounts from these books, we find that parents and grandparents really appreciate the knowledge they get from these books. 4-page illustrated previews are now available as free download (see below).
Endangered species highlighted in our comic books
It is shocking to realize how much of the forests of Guatemala have been bulldozed, burnt over, and destroyed just in the last ten years. We seek to highlight the endangered species whose habitat is being obliterated. Each species of flower, each species of bush or tree, has their own book. Each plant speaks to the reader and explains their life and their dreams and aspirations.
Each book is a personal message from the heart of the fields and forests of the Mayan areas of Guatemala.
Save the forests, birds, and remarkable animals of Guatemala
I was able to save a vast area of Neotropical seasonal rain forest on the northern side of Lake Yaxha and adjacent Lake Sacnab. I worked here five years to create a national park (now visited by thousands of people).
Now is time for the plants and animals of the endangered Maya forests to speak in their own voice, to show their value in being saved from decimation.
All Spice
Achiote
Guatumo
Strangler Fig
Rubber
Nutmeg vs Virola
Heliconia
Hura Polyandra
Tomatoes
Avocados
Here are our educational books on plants. We have storyboards for another 30 titles (so thirty more plant species).
Deer of Guatemala
Macawesome
Jaguarundi
Architect Bird
Blood-Thirsty Mayan Bat
Spider Monkey
Crocodilian Species
Coatimundi
Peccary
Mayan Doggie
Here are our educational books on Maya animals.
As soon as funding is available from individuals, from a helpful corporation, or from a foundation, we can produce books on another thirty species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and creatures of the oceans (two oceans border on Guatemala: Caribbean Sea on one side; Pacific Ocean on the southern coast).
In addition to flowers, plants, and trees,
we also study bees and butterflies
Although our entertaining books are focused on trees, bushes, flowers, nutritious fruits and vegetables, we will also be showing Maya bee comic book characters. Bees are essential to pollinate many of the plants. Butterflies can also help pollination (just not as efficiently as bees; but the fields and forests still need the help of butterflies).
The cacao empire 2000 years ago really rose during Teotihuacan presence
Cacao was much more than a treasure of the Aztec empire. Cacao is grown in many more areas of the Mayan-speaking lands than just Soconusco and the adjacent Costa Sur in Guatemala. Actually Soconusco and the Costa Sur were visited by so many trade caravans from the Olmecs from 1000 BC to the Aztec just before the Spanish conquest, that these cacao areas were probably multi-lingual.
The first real “cacao empire” was that of the Teotihuacanos whose presence throughout much (but not all) of the Costa Sur was studiously avoided being mentioned for decades. The FLAAR Report in 1975 (The Escuintla Hoards) stood as a lone pillar of reality for many years. However still today most books and articles focus on Kaminaljuyu as the focus of Teotihuacan interaction in Guatemala. Yes, that was obviously an important “regional capital” of Teotihuacan power and commerce, but paled in comparison to the extend of land influenced by the Teotihuacan merchants, priests, and warriors of the 3rd through 5th or 6th centuries.
The Olmecs, pre-Olmecs, and post-Olmec (proto-Maya) merchants also impacted the Costa Sur. The presence of pure Olmec portable figurines from the Costa Sur is remarkable. And of course comparable portable Olmec jadeite and figurines from other materials have been found throughout Mesoamerica, even in Aztec caches 2000 years after the Olmec civilization.
Today most cocoa and chocolate which are sold and consumed around the world is grown in Africa. But the origin of cacao as a beverage is Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. The actual plant species seems to have come from South America, but Theobroma of minimally three species was in Mesoamerica millennia before the Spanish arrived. It is sad to see so many copy-and-paste web sites which say that cacao comes from South America. In South America the variety of cacao and cacao-like pods were used for their white pulp which surrounds the seeds. The chocolate beverage that was consumed throughout the New World is from Mesoamerica, not from the Inca or Moche or the other impressive civilizations of South America.
Once said, my primary interest today is to identify how many species of trees were sources of cacao for the Maya, Aztec and their neighbors in Oaxaca and dozens of other areas. And even more, my research goal is to study, learn about, and publish about the several dozen herbs, spices, flowers, and other plant parts which were used to flavor cacao drinks for several thousand years.
Most important of all, our #1 goal, is to find each individual pertinent cacao-related plant and cacao flavoring plant, and do high-resolution photographs of fine art giclee quality (since many of these plants are facing being bulldozed, burned out, clear cut from surface mining, and being obliterated by modern plantations of money-making commercial trees which are not native (teak, Brazilian rubber, African palm oil trees are the biggest causes of total destruction of natural eco-systems in Guatemala)).
Glossary on cacao, cocoa, chocolate What is the difference between cacao, cocoa, and chocolate?
cacao: Theobroma cacao is the scientific botanical name of the source of cacao pods and cocoa beans. Theobroma bicolor is a second source of cocoa beans and chocolate.
Theobroma angustifolium is a third source, but botanists have not yet fully identified whether this came from Costa Rica in the times of the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Maya, Toltec or Aztec. Or whether the Spaniards brought Theobroma angustifolium to Guatemala quickly after the conquest. In the 16th-17th centuries the main cacao source in Soconusco of Chiapas, Mexico and Costa Sur of adjacent Guatemala was Theobroma angustifolium. There were thousands of Theobroma angustifolium trees in plantations. But today we found only two individual trees remaining! Today people in the Costa Sur prefer different varieties of Theobroma cacao.
Since the grandfather who still has one of these trees says the cacao drink is very tasty, people who seek an alternative to modern commercial chocolate might like to re-establish Theobroma angustifolium before it disappears.
Chocolate is assumed to come from the Nahuatl language. However linguists and archaeologists argue about precisely which Nahuatl word(s) were the source of this modern spelling (or whether the word chocolate came from a different Mesoamerican source). Either way, to me, chocolate is the final edible product. So I do not see or taste chocolate when I might eat a raw seed of a cacao pod. And the tasty white sap that surrounds all the cacao seeds definitely has no chocolate flavor whatsoever. Nonetheless, the pulp has a great taste and in South America they bred cacao species just for the pulp (the seeds were normally thrown away!).
Cocoa is usually the word used in English instead of the correct, original, botanical name cacao. I tend not to use the word cocoa since it may be confused with coconut or with other plant products. I prefer to use the scientific name cacao. Personally I have always considered that cacao is the raw original bean; and that cocoa is after the bean has been fermented, ground, heated, and processed. I estimate that if you look at a dozen web sites that not all will definite cacao or cocoa the same way.
In the meantime, it would be worthwhile to study whether the Maya, Aztec, Mixtec, and Zapotec (and much earlier Olmec) used raw cacao beans or processed into cocoa.
Dark chocolate became a fad starting several years ago. So naturally I began to buy the SPECIAL DARK kind of HERSHEY’S COCOA. But if you read the label it says that dark includes Dutched cocoa (sic). And the label warns you that such Dutched cocoa has less antioxidants than natural unsweetened variety.
Pataxte and/or balamte’ both are local names for Theobroma bicolor. Pataxte is raised in many parts of Guatemala, many more areas than are listed in monographs and articles on chocolate.
Theobroma cacao: the most common source of cocoa and chocolate.
Theobroma bicolor: pataxte or balamte; can also make cocoa and chocolate but is not often used commercially.
Theobroma angustifolium: a third tree species whose fruit pods produce seeds (beans) from which tasty cacao drinks can be prepared. Theobroma angustifolium existed in Costa Rica in pre-Columbian times, but botanists have not yet clearly stated one way or another whether this species existed in Socunusco before the Spaniards took over the plantations there. Over 90% of books and articles on cacao, cocoa, and/or chocolate do not mention nor express awareness of the existence of Theobroma angustifolium. The FLAAR team has made the effort to find trees, the only two Theobroma angustifolium trees that we have found where once thousands grew in the 16th-17th centuries.
Canon EOS 6D , EF-65mm Macro, f/16, 1/125, ISO 200, 10:24 am, Aug. 09 2016, Frutas del Mundo, Izabal , Erick Flores, FLAAR. Theobroma bicolor, pataxte flowers with baby cacao pod issuing from the flower at the top.
There are two species of cacao native to Guatemala: pataxte (also called balamte, jaguar tree) and the more common Theobroma cacao.
Canon EOS 6D , EF-65mm Macro, f/16, 1/125, ISO 640, 10:39 am, Jun. 03 2016, Guatemala City , Erick Flores, FLAAR. Here are just flowers: the cacao pods have not yet started to issue from the center of the flower.
FLAAR raises Theobroma cacao around its office in Guatemala City. Pataxte does not accept the cold at this altitude (1500 meters).
We also visit cacao orchards around the country to do close-up photography of the remarkable flowers.
Since there are two species of Mayan chocolate plants, the flowers of each cacao species are a distinct different color.