November 16, 2018
RED-BELLIED SQUIRREL
Last month on October 4, during my camping trip to Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, I was resting on the excellent walkway/bike path between Palenque National Park and the town of Palenque, when I was distracted by a pair of Golden-fronted Woodpeckers issuing alarm calls. Just below the crown of a tall Coconut Palm planted along the way, the birds were orbiting around a squirrel clinging head-down on the side of the palm's trunk, flicking his tail. His cheeks bulged from something carried in his mouth, and I wouldn't have been surprised if it were a woodpecker egg or nestling. You can see him at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116sr.jpg
With the bright rusty coloration on his front end he's clearly a different kind of squirrel than the gray squirrels we're used to. In the squirrel genus Sciurus, 28 species are recognized, and four species are listed for neighboring Guatemala, so it's probably about the same for Chiapas.
This is a Red-bellied Squirrel, SCIURUS AUREOGASTER, sometimes also known as the Mexican Gray Squirrel. Among the squirrel species found in this region, only the Variegated Squirrel, Sciurus variegatoides, bears such rusty coloration, but on that species the rustiness occurs more to the rear, is less prominent, plus a black stripe or a hint of a stripe normally runs along the squirrel's spine. Our Red-bellied Squirrels are endemic to central and southern Mexico and Guatemala, plus they've been introduced into the US's Florida Keys.
This is an adaptable species, in Mexico occurring from sea level to 3300m (10,00ft), from lowland tropical broadleaf forests like those at Palenque to conifer forests and even savannas. Mostly Red-bellied Squirrels eat acorns and pine nuts, but also they feed on fungi, insects, eggs and nestlings, plus a variety of fruits ranging from green figs to tamarind pods and palm nuts. At Palenque there are no oaks or pines, so they may put special pressure on nesting birds.
On the Internet, Mammology.Org offers a free PDF providing plenty of life history information on the species. Search for the article published in the journal Mammalian Species 49(951):81-92, entitled "Sciurus aureogasters Rodentia: Sciuridae), by John Koprowski and others.
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PICRAMNIA!
The "!" after the name Picramnia points to the fact that I've been "doing the botany" on this plant for the last four months or so but only this week did I figure out what it was. I've hardly ever struggled so for an ID. During the sleuthing process I photographed more than the usual technical details, so this is a long entry. If such down-in-the-dirt details don't interest you, then skip this entry.
Last June during the early rainy season this plant -- a shrub or small tree about ten ft tall (3m) -- was both flowering and fruiting, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pm.jpg
The leaves, which alternated with one another along the stem, were pinnately compound with seven or so leaflets, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pn.jpg
Young stems and leaf petioles were densely short-hairy, or velvety, as illustrated at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116po.jpg
Flowers were arranged in long, drooping racemes longer than the leaves, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pp.jpg
Up close, all the flowers proved to be unisexual females -- so plants in this species are "dioecious." There must have been a male in the neighborhood but I never found him. The simple, elegant structure of a female flower seen from the side can be admired at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pq.jpg
The green, hairy, spherical item in the picture's center is the ovary, atop which two curving, pollen-receiving stigmas arise. The scoop-shaped, whitish items below the ovary are petals, and between each petal's base and the ovary's base is a nectar-producing gland. Looking at the flower from above, you see that it bears three whitish petals and three greenish sepals, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pr.jpg
These are great field marks and at this point I was certain that already I should be able to identify it: The above features indicated the Quassia Family, the Simarubaceae. The problem was that our plant didn't match any of the species in that family listed as occurring in the Yucatan. Returning to the little tree, a cross section of the ovary was taken, revealing what's shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pt.jpg
The ovary is divided into two compartments, or "carpels," with two ovules per carpel. In the picture, in both carpels one ovule has been removed while another, or part of one, remains.
Ovaries with ovules mature into fruits with seeds, and our little tree bore flowers, fruits in all stages, including green ones, almost-mature orangish ones, and blackish ripe fruits, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pv.jpg
Cross-sections of maturing fruits showed one or two seeds developing inside, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116pu.jpg
In that picture the section shown on the right is taken lengthwise, not across. The cross section shows that of the four ovules the ovary began with, only one is developing into a robust seed, a second is limited in its growth, and apparently the other two have aborted.
With all these details at hand, the identification should have been easygoing. However, all the literature sent me back to the Quassia Family, the Simarubaceae. The only species in that family often known by northerners is the Tree-of-Heaven, or Ailanthus. If you're familiar with that native Chinese tree, often planted and escaped in much of the US, you've smelled its sharp, musky odor. Our little Yucatan tree's crushed odor produced a similarly sharp smell, seeming to support the Quassia Family ID.
The problem was, that since my sources were published, some genera in the Quassia Family have been separated into newly formed families, and our little Yucatan tree was one of them. It's now placed in the Picramnia Family, the Picramniaceae. Not only that, but the Picramnia Family was given it own new order, the Picramniales.
To put that into perspective, in bird classification, all songbirds, from stubby House Sparrows to sleek warblers and vireos, belong to the Passerine Order. Being put into your own order indicates that your ancestors evolved something special not shared with closely related orders. The reason given for separating the Picramnia Family is that members of the Quassia Family to which it used to belong are supposed to have only one ovule per ovary carpel, while we've seen that our tree's ovaries have two.
So, what species of the genus Picramnia do we have? Two species are listed for the Yucatan Peninsuala: Picramnia antidesma and Picramnia teapensis. They are similar to one another and not many details are given about them on the Internet. In the Yucatan Picramnia antidesma frequently has been collected on the peninsula's eastern side, maybe within 75 miles of the Caribbean coast -- in the rainier parts. Collections aren't mentioned from here in the central area. However, a few collections of Picramnia teapensis have been made in the more arid interior.
Also, leaves of Picramnia antidesma are described as "subcoriaceous," meaning somewhat leathery, while Picramnia teapensis leaves are "membranaceous," or of the texture of parchment. Ours are more membranaceous, so that's a second vote for Picramnia teapensis.
A dried herbarium sheet of Picramnia teapensis on the Internet shows hairy young twigs and petioles like ours, so on these grounds alone I'm thinking we have Picramnia teapensis with about 80% certainty.
Picramnia teapensis occurs from southern Mexico south through Central America into northern South America. The genus Picramnia, restricted to the American tropics, is represented by 41 species, which mostly inhabit rainforests. Our species is among the few adapted to more arid conditions.
And here's one final detail, which surely has no significance at all, but which is weird. This Picramnia teapensis and the Bonellia bush profiled in September, belong to the two smallest, most obscure plant families of I've found in this area -- the Picramnia and Theophrastus Familes. I've found only one plant of each. Yet these two trees were standing so close together that their limbs were intertwined. The habitat was similar to what's seen for miles around. It's almost too much of a coincidence.
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PINK POWDERPUFF
Last month when I set my tent up in the campground of Rosario National Park, on the east side of Sayaxché in northern Guatemala's Petén district, a tree about ten feet tall (3m) bore just two or three clusters of pinkish flowers, one cluster shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116ca.jpg
With such twice-pinnately compound leaves and a powderpuff-like flowering structure, or inflorescence, it's clearly a member of the huge Bean Family. And within that family it belongs to the subfamily or tribe to which acacias, mimosas, albizias and the like belong. The tree bore the remains of a single legume-type fruit, which already had matured, split open, and dropped its beans, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116ce.jpg
That picture shows the legume's two split-apart sides. Each side bears along its margin strong nerves of the type seen on legumes that, at a certain stage of maturity and dryness, suddenly snap apart, slinging their beans fair distances from the mother tree. Such explosive fruits occasionally are encountered in the Bean Family.
The pinkish powderpuff item in the first picture isn't a flower itself, but rather a cluster of flowers. A side view of the cluster shows individual flowers issuing numerous stamens, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116cb.jpg
Despite daily rains at that time, I never saw the stamens stiffly sticking out the way they're shown in most pictures. Maybe the rains were beating them down, causing them to tangle? You can see that the stamens' slender filaments are white at their bases, turning pink only toward their tips. If you remove just one flower, the blossom's structure becomes easier to interpret, and you can see that the pollen-producing anthers are tiny compared to the filaments, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116cc.jpg
Many Bean Family trees and bushes share features very similar to what the pictures show, and often it's hard to figure out which species you have. However, this particular tree's leaves were compound in an unusual way, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116cd.jpg
That's one compound leaf, and the unusual feature is that the leaf's first division produces only two secondary structures -- only two pinnae. Then these two pinnae are divided the usual way into numerous tertiary subdivisions, or pinnules.
These features lead us to CALLIANDRA SURINAMENSIS, maybe best known in English as the Pink Powderpuff, though other trees with similarly clustered flowers bearing many long, pink stamens share that name. It's native to northern South America but much planted and sometimes escaped in numerouis tropical countries because of its prettiness. Probably it was planted in the campground.
I read that the species can flower year round, a feature appreciated by many pollinators.
*****
ORGANICALLY GROWN ROSELLE/ JAMAICA COMING ON
Back just before the rainy season began, in April or so, our neighbor Don Solís brought us a bag of Roselle seeds. He grows Roselle commercially, using chemicals. We wanted to try growing it organically.
Here Roselle is known as Jamaica, pronounced "ha-MY-ca." It's HIBISCUS SABDARIFFA, thus a true hibiscus, one native to the Old World tropics. For centuries the plant has been famous for the teas and food dishes prepared from its flowers' acid, fleshy calyxes. This is another of those plants introduced into the Americas by Europeans 500 years ago, after which America's tropical indigenous people incorporated it into their own traditional cuisine. Down here Jamaica tea is very popular, even sold in bottles in supermarkets. In the US, maybe it's best known as the main ingredient in Red Zinger herbal tea.
I didn't know anything about growing Roselle, but the Internet is full of information. With a pickax I broke up our cow-hoof-compacted clay soil, mixed in plenty of composted cow and burro manure, and planted my seedlings one meter apart (3.3ft). Because Roselle is closely related to Okra and was reported to grow even taller than Okra, and Okra doesn't need that much space, one meter seemed too far apart. However, once the Roselle plants reached their fastest growing period, soon I began thinking that maybe they needed more than a meter. You can see the dense wall of Roselle plants as they are now, standing about 3m tall (10ft), with Negrita the medium-size dog providing scale, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116hs.jpg
Some visitors before the plants began flowering thought that the plants' growth form and leafshape suggested Marijuana plants. However, Roselle's leaves are mostly three-lobed, while Marijuana's leaves consist of up to eleven slender leaflets. A typical Roselle leaf is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116hw.jpg
The Roselle flower with its large, bell-shaped, dark-centered corolla surrounding many stamens with their filaments fused into a cylinder encircling the style couldn't look any more hibiscusy, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116ht.jpg
A rear view of a flower, showing that the corolla's base arises from a five-toothed, purple calyx, and that the calyx itself issues from a cuplike "involucre" consisting of several slender, sharp-pointed "bracts," which are modified leaves, is seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116hu.jpg
It's the calyxes needed for brewing tasty teas, but in the above picture the calyx is almost hidden by the involucre. Removing a few involucral bracts reveals the calyxes' swollen glands, seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116hv.jpg
The three greenish spots at the calyx's bottom show where bracts were removed. Above each bract there's an elongated, round-topped, dark purple, acid-filled, gland. With time the glands increase in size dramatically. My plants have just begun flowering.
The main reason the plants take up so much room is that they branch robustly from their semi-woody bases, and those branches also branch. While holding a plant's outer branches apart, I got a shot of the interior branching, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181116hx.jpg
Though our Roselle flowers are destined mostly for providing Jamaica tea for visitors to Genesis in Ek Balam, the hotel operated by the ranch's owner, tea making is just one option for the acid-filled sepals. From them you can prepare jam, jelly, marmalade, candies, syrups and sauces.
For one of my own meals I chopped up whole flowers, including the green ovaries, sauteed them with onion, garlic, chili pepper and tomato, and scrambled them with two eggs. A few young leaves were added, contributing a mild lemony flavor. The meal was OK but I think the flowers were too young to produce much taste, for the dish was a bit bland.
Later I brewed 15 whole young flowers along with their maturing ovaries. The resulting tea, providing only a cup of tea, tasted like Jamaica tea, but also there was a "corncob taste," apparently produced by the maturing ovaries. It seems there's no shortcut to having just the sepals needed for the tea. The flowers will have to be dried, then the sepals removed from each flower individually, which will be a real task.
You've seen that my Roselle planting created a dense wall. Rows of Roselle plants can be used in permaculture as windbreaks and barriers.
Now that I've decided that it's a waste of flowers to use them too early, according to literature produced by commercial growers in neighboring Quintana Roo, the main harvest will take place later, probably toward the end of December. I read that the plants are highly sensitive to day length, so their flowering and fruiting is not controlled by water availability or temperature. For the harvest, the entire plants will be cut and dried, then the flowers removed, then the calyxes removed individually from the flowers. We'll see how that goes.
*****
TALKING TO SILENCE
From Independence Day in September into the coming year, Mexicans have something to celebrate or get ready to celebrate nearly all the time. This month's Day of the Dead, at least among this area's Maya, lasts most of the month. On November 20, it's the Mexican Revolution; on December 1 the new President takes office; on December 8 it's the Immaculate Conception; December 12 is Virgin of Guadalupe Day; then Christmas, both the gringo one on the 25th and the traditional one on January 6th; and the New Year, beyond which my Frutería San José calendar doesn't extend.
I'm about 4kms (2.5mile) from any settlement, but Saturday night, like the previous Saturday night, super-loud boom-boom music made it hard to sleep here on the ranch, and both Saturday nights the racket carried on until about 4AM. In all these little Maya towns if the decible level isn't deafening and 4AM isn't reached, those paying the fellow with the synthesizer, amplifier and big speakers feel cheated.
Early Sunday morning when the noise finally abated, the silence came as such a relief that it seemed to have substance, like honeysuckle fragrance deep in a June night, or warm honey on the skin. "Thanks," I said to it.
Often during these deep-night periods of waking, I lie thinking about the contents and style of essays normally presented in this spot, but that early Sunday morning the pure, soothing silence brought with it this thought: Silence is so perfect and nurturing that maybe these essays are like boom-boom music, my saying stuff that just as well might be left unsaid.
The idea has been bouncing around my mind lately because I've been correcting typos and other problems with my book Natchez Naturalist Newsletter, which people usually tell me is my best. It was written during my hermit days in the woods of southwestern Mississippi, and I have to agree about it's being my best, if only because nearly everything I've written since then has been paraphrasing what was said then with more spontaneity and immediacy.
With this notion rumbling in my head, one day an email from Chris of Louisiana drifted in, carrying a poem by Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man," which a friend of hers had copied to her, because it reminded her of something I'd written. In a way, it was one of my thoughts bouncing back to me, but in a form stated much earlier by Stevens with his profoundly more developed art and genius. It read:
I felt good reading those words, and it felt good that Chris had sent the poem to me, and that her friend had sent it to her, and that that friend had had to receive it from someone else... feelings and thoughts sparking from one thinking, feeling being to another like electrical discharges among nerves in a brain, as consciousness defines and realizes itself. It all resonates with the concept of The One Thing I keep talking about, who examines Herself with input from us physical entities serving as Her nerve endings.
Beneath the mosquito net just before dawn last Sunday, then, with all those thoughts marinating, I decided that maybe it's OK to keep sending my thoughts into golden silence. OK, if only because once in a blue moon what I say nudges someone to send me a poem with thoughts and feelings from another place, another time, another dimension of thinking and feeling, and that maybe the poem will even remind me, as often I need to be reminded, of the exquisite goal of being he who... nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
All previous Newsletters are archived at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/.
