November 23, 2018
PALO DE CAJA FLOWERING
Each Sunday morning during my fruit-buying bikeride to Temozón I enjoy seeing how the roadside vegetation has changed during the previous week, and always there's the possibility that something new will turn up. This week I'd already passed a certain blooming plant when something about its appearance began gnawing at me. I went back for the closer look shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123al.jpg
The spike-like raceme of tiny, white flowers arising from vegetation velvety hairy on its stems, petioles and leaf undersurfaces is a combination of field marks shared by numerous common species here, especially the several weedy species of Croton in the Euphorbia Family. From the bike, I'd assumed that that's what we had here. But, no Croton has compound leaves with three distinct leaflets like these.
Up close, the spike-like raceme of seemingly unisexual male flowers still looked a lot like Croton, except that these flowers are vaguely two-lipped, the lower lip longer than the upper, and the stamens appear to be of different lengths, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123am.jpg
There you can see how very hairy the raceme's rachis is. Leaf bottoms are just as velvety, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123an.jpg
In short, here I had to "do the botany," since I couldn't think of any species with such flowers, and bearing very hairy compound leaves of three leaflets. Such trifoliate leaves are simply absent from the vast majority of plant families.
Our roadside plant turned out to be ALLOPHYLUS COMINIA, a member of the tropical Soapberry Family, the Sapindaceae -- which produces many species with compound leaves, but in that family such spike-like flowering clusters are rare. Knowing that, in the species' technical description I read that Allophylus cominia doesn't bear unisexual flowers, but rather the species is "polygamo-dioecious," meaning that the individual plants bear flowers that functionally are one sex or the other, but a few blossoms of the opposing sex or a few bisexual flowers are to be found on it at flowering time.
We've encountered this sexually ambiguous species before, though then it was fruiting. When it's fruiting, in January or so, it looks more like a regular member of the Soapberry Family. Our page on this species showing a fruiting head and individual fruits is at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/palocaja.htm
Though this is a fairly obscure species, it enjoys a respectable presence on the Internet because throughout its broad distribution traditionally it's been been used medicinally in the treatment of diabetes. Moreover, its antidiabetic properties have been confirmed in lab tests, for type 2 diabetes treatment. A water-based extract from the leaves is used.
*****
TEPEGUAJE/ SUJ TREE
Last September 31, during my camping trip into northern Guatemala's Petén district, in the campground of Rosario National Park on the east side of the town of Sayaxché, a fair-sized forest tree was labeled with a name that surprised me. You can see the tree's sizable trunk with its sign beside it at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123ly.jpg
The sign gives the local name as Suj, its binomial as Lysiloma desmostachys, and the species is assigned to the Mimosa Family. The botanical names are out of date. Nowadays most experts regard the Mimosa Family as a subfamily of the massive Bean Family, and Lysiloma desmostachys has been recognized as a synonym of LYSILOMA ACAPULCENSIS.
It was the genus name Lysiloma that interested me most, for in arid northern Yucatan we have a very common Lysiloma tree species, Lysiloma latisiliquum, sometimes called the False Tamarind. Its page is at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/tsalam.htm
But the Yucatan tree never gets as large as our campground Lysiloma acapulcensis, which grows up to 40ft (12m), I read. You can see the view into the tree above the trunk, its heavy branches snaking toward light high in the forest canopy, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123lz.jpg
The tree was neither flowering nor fruiting, but the telephoto lens picked out its ferny leaves, which are very typical of the Mimosa Subfamily and very similar to the Yucatan's False Tamarind, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123lx.jpg
The campground Lysiloma acapulcensis bears no good English name, and really no well established Spanish name is recognized for it, though in Mexico Tepehuaje appears on several web pages.
Distributed from central lowland Mexico into much of Central America, Lysiloma acapulcensis is used for lumber and firewood, and its bark contains such a high level of tannin that its used for tanning leather. Tannin is astringent, causing tissue to pucker and tighten up, which helps with diarrhea, and to tighten up teeth loose in their sockets. A codex from the 1500s reports that it was used for the cough, fevers, and to purge the bowls. Eating the tree's seeds from two or three pods while fasting for two or three days has been used as a treatment for the amoebas. The trees' leaves and pods serve as livestock feed.
*****
EATING MAKAL LEAVES & STEM
At https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/makal.htm we meet one of the most important starchy root-crops in the world, a Taro-like plant known to the Yucatan Maya as Makal, but by many other names elsewhere.
Makal produces an underground starchy tuber that can grow as large as, I'm told here, a soccer ball, maybe as big as a basketball. So far I've only seen them about the size of hen eggs, so I'm waiting for a big one to profile here.
Meanwhile, I'd read that young Makal leaves can be eaten, and that the bottom part of the stem also is edible. This week I needed to remove a Makal that was too close to a Chaya tree with its edible leaves, and tried eating a leaf and part of a stem. You can see a young, unfolding, pale green leaf just right for eating on a plant at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123mc.jpg
The Makal tuber and presumably other parts of the plant are toxic until cooked, so I hesitated to eat much of the stem. A Maya worker at the ranch told me to just eat that part of the stem immediately above the slender roots, which I did. You can see a bowl of chopped greens resulting from one young leaf, and a plant's lower stem removed for eating, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123md.jpg
The whitish stem part was sliced into several thin wafers, then fried in a skillet like fried potatoes. In fact, I added onion just as I do with fried potatoes, and the dish tasted like fried potatoes. Once the stem part was singed to a golden hue on both sides, I added the leaf shreds, and once they'd cooked down, ate it all. It was pretty good, nothing spectacular, and probably fried potatoes tastes better to most people, but if the infrastructure has collapsed and you're hungry in the tropics, this might be a good dish to remember.
*****
GEOPHILA OF THE FOREST FLOOR
Last October 1, during my camping trip into northern Guatemala's Petén district, in the campground of Rosario National Park on the east side of the town of Sayaxché, in deep shade on the forest floor at the edge of the campground a delicate little herb emerged here and there from the forest litter, which stayed soaked all the time because of daily afternoons rains. You can see the herb's heart-shaped leaves and very small, white flowers -- whose corolla lobes interestingly ranged in number from four to seven -- at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123gp.jpg
In the northern Temperate Zone such fleshy-leafed herbs with delicate looking little flowers appear in the spring woods -- species like Wild Ginger and Partridge-Berry -- but in the tropics such plants are a little unusual. When I tugged on a flower, it turned out to be attached to a rhizome creeping horizontally below the leaf litter and rooting at its stem-joints, or nodes, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123gq.jpg
Flowers proved to belong to a small cluster of blossoms, flower buds and developing fruits, all arranged atop a short, thick peduncle, which arose at the base of leaf petioles, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123gr.jpg
In that picture, notice the conspicuous, papery stipules at the image's bottom, left. When you see such well developed pairs of stipules, automatically it's worth thinking of the huge but mostly tropical Coffee or Madder Family, the Rubiaceae. And that family often produces flowers with a few lobes arising from a cylindrical tube such as this, so already we're thinking of the Coffee Family. In the above picture, something interesting is going on with the flowers, so a closer look is taken, seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123gv.jpg
First of all, the bulging, green bottom of the middle flower in that picture looks like an inferior ovary -- one with the flower's sepals, corolla and sexual parts arising at its top, not at its base. That's also a feature of the Coffee Family, and since most flowering plant groups produce superior, not inferior ovaries, it's an important feature. Also, the flower cluster is subtended by two purplish, sharp-pointed "bracts," which are modified leaves. A peep into the tiny blossom's throat doesn't reveal much extra, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123gs.jpg
It looks like the flower may have four or so stamens, which is alright for the Coffee Family. One plant in the area had produced a fruit held above the leaf litter on its peduncle, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123gt.jpg
When the fruit was squashed, it looked like a grape inside, with two seeds surrounded by juicy pulp, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123gu.jpg
At the fruit's top, the five erect, green sepals confirms that the fruit was developed from an inferior ovary, else the sepals would be below the fruit.
These were all good field marks, and since I had a copy of Paul Standley and Louis Williams' 1975 treatment of the Coffee Family in Guatemala, I felt confident of an easy identification. And such was the case.
Our plant was GEOPHILA MACROPODA, with no good English name, nor even a Spanish name that I can find. It's found in lowland wet thickets and forests from southern Mexico -- not in the arid Yucatan -- south to Brazil and northern Argentina. In Guatemala three Geophila species are listed, but the other two produce red or orange fruits, not black ones like ours, so finding a fruit was a lucky break. In the treatment by Standley and Williams I read that the stolons reach about a meter long (3ft).
I especially enjoyed meeting this little herb, if only because its appearance reminded me so much of species that in my earlier days I delighted in finding on chilly, early-spring days in woods up north. While taking the above pictures, it was a struggle to deal with the intense heat and ravenous mosquitoes, and having those cool, fresh memories in the back of my mind felt good.
*****
CALAGUALA FERN
Last September 31, during my camping trip into northern Guatemala's Petén district, in the campground of Rosario National Park on the east side of the town of Sayaxché, a leg-long fern frond arising from a slender, densely hairy rhizome crawling up a tree trunk caught my eye. You can see it at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123ph.jpg
Ferns reproduce by means of microscopic spores, and spores are produced in stalked, baglike "sporangia," which themselves are nearly microscopic. These sporangia often are gathered in small "sori," which sometimes are called fruitdots. Fruitdots on the undersurface of this frond were unusual, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181123pi.jpg
The "classic fruitdot" is elongated like a fingernail clipping, often curved, and is partly covered on one side by a narrow, cellophane-like "indusium." Normally fruitdots are arranged in some kind of pattern. Therefore, the fruitdots in the above picture are a little unusual in that they're simply round dots with no indusium, and they're seemingly randomly scattered.
We've seen this fern before, in the much more arid northern Yucatan Peninsula, where it was uncommon. There we called it Calaguala fern, though that's just one of many names over its vast American-tropics distribution area, from Florida in the US to southern South America. Our page for it is at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/calagual.htm
On that page the fern's fruitdots are much more numerous and ordered on the frond's undersurface. Also, the undersurface is golden colored. The blade is golden because it was old and fading, and I suppose its numerous, well ordered fruitdots result from having plenty of sunlight. Our Guatemalan fern was in deep shade and not nearly as vigorous looking as the one on the above page.
So this shows how a species can vary in its appearance, though the more technical details of fruitdot size, shape and lack of indusium remain the same.
*****
ARMY ANT PHILOSOPHY
One morning this week when the dogs and I returned from our dawn jog, the shed where the dogs' food was kept was swarming with army ants. Outside, the dogs were dancing and laughing in anticipation of being fed, but all I could do was let them watch in amazement as I returned to the hut without filling their bowls. They followed me, and as I ate my own meal, exhibited every expression that confused, disappointed dogs are capable of.
About an hour later the vast majority of the ants had marched on, but still a few stragglers remained. Either I could go for the dogfood and get some ant bites, or come back later. I went for the dogfood, unwilling to endure more dirty looks from the dogs.
Later, in the garden as I worked up soil for planting Cilantro, I thought about the army-ant strategy for living.
For one thing, since I've been reading a lot of history lately, it struck me that humans throughout our history, like army ants, have regularly joined together and gone about killing and destroying with little or no consideration for the rights, character or innocence of individual victims.
It's easy to see why such destructive behavior has been so popular with roving bands of humans throughout history: It's completely "natural" to do so. Everything evolves, including humanity, and all forms of evolution are a matter of certain things being replaced by other things. Sometimes things don't want to be replaced, so violence, even extermination, results. Among humans, sometimes it's one person replacing another, sometimes its a tribe or community, and sometimes vast civilizations. In every case, the army-ant strategy proves to be an efficient, effective way for one entity to replace another and, in Nature, efficient use of resources, and results count.
To me, the more interesting question about humanity's occasional army-ant behavior is, "Why would Nature on the one hand condone and consistently employ army-ant-like behavior, yet, on the other hand, evolve humans, many of whom, once they reflect on the matter, are repelled by the whole idea?
The only answer I can come up with that feels right is this: Nature, by which I mean the Universe with all its creations, is evolving from a purely physical, mechanistic, unfeeling state, toward a higher state of mentality and feelings.
In that context, here on Earth we humans manifest an early transitional stage, in which most of the time our behavior, thinking and feeling is controlled by genes evolved in the unfeeling physical world, yet some of us, some of the time, are capable of thoughts and feelings transcending the mandates of our genes. Humanity's priorities slowly are evolving away from the old snake-brain obsessions of sex, status and territory/ material wealth, toward something higher.
Of course, this whole question of the Universe evolving in a certain direction -- "end-directedness evolution of the Universe," as some call it -- makes most scientists queasy. End-directedness evolution is hard or impossible to prove. How do you design an experiment to confirm or deny it, an experiment that peers can conduct to see if they get the same results? If you can't do these things, then you're not scientific, I was taught.
Still, nowadays some well established scientists are thinking there may be something to the notion. Friend Eric in Mérida sent us a link to an article surveying the matter in The New Atlantis entitled "Evolution and the Purposes of Life." It's long, but worth reading, and free.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
All previous Newsletters are archived at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/.
