November 30, 2018
TIGER-STRIPED LONGWING
Last October 3rd when I was camping near Palenque Ruins in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, at the wood's edge a butterfly turned up I'd not seen in the more arid Yucatan Peninsula to the north. You can see the little beauty at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130hc.jpg
Volunteer butterfly identifier Bea in Ontario had fun pegging this as the Tiger-striped Longwing, HELICONIUS ISMENIUS.
I was a little surprised that this species belonged to the longwing group -- genus Heliconius --, because the longwings I know have longer wings. For example, a common one in the Yucatan is the Zebra Heliconian shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/zebra.htm
A little less frequent in the Yucatan is the Crimson-patched Longwing at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/longwing.htm
Our Tiger-striped species occupies moist lowland forests from southern Mexico south all through Central America into northern South America, where sometimes they are abundant. Their caterpillars feed on passionflower vines, members of the genus Passiflora, which commonly occur throughout that area both as weedy species along roads and high-climbing vines in the forest.
Our Tiger-striped species is a member of the "tiger Müllerian mimicry ring," and in that there's a story. First, Müllerian mimicry is the phenomenon of two or more species sharing noxious traits evolving to develop a similar appearance, through "convergent evolution" -- evolving so that their appearances "converge" to similar-looking states. If a predator learns to avoid one of the undesirable species, the other species benefits as well. Similar-to-one-another species sharing the noxious trait are considered to belong to a particular "Müllerian mimicry ring," and our Tiger-striped species, being toxic and unpalatable to most predators, belongs to the "tiger" Müllerian mimicry ring, of longwing butterflies with tigerish stripes, and who similarly are toxic and unpalatable.
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FLOR DE CACAO TREE
Last October 3rd at the woods edge at Maya Bell Campground near the ruins of Palenque, in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, a smallish tree with slender stems was flowering, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130qb.jpg
Even at a distance it was clear that here was a member of the big Hibiscus Family, the Malvaceae, because of the profile exhibited by the open blossom in the above picture. A closer look at that flower is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130qc.jpg
The feature indicating that our tree was a member of the Hibiscus Family was the manner by which the several pollen-producing stamens mergee by their stem-like filaments to form a long, white cylinder encircling the stigma's style. To better show this diagnostic feature I cut a flower's "staminal column" -- the white cylinder -- down the middle, disclosing what's seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130qd.jpg
At top, center in that image, the smooth, glossy thing is the stigma, where pollen from other flowers is supposed to be deposited. The vertical column below the stigma is its style, which is a kind of neck atop the ovary at the blossom's bottom. On both sides of the style, the objects shaped like creased bananas are anther cells, from which pollen is released.
Along certain limbs, peculiar objects grew like the one shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130qe.jpg
At first I thought this was an immature fruit, but if it were a fruit, the sepals at its top would make the fruit derive from an inferior ovary (corolla and sexual parts arising atop the ovary, as opposed to a superior ovary with corolla and sexual parts arising at the ovary's base) -- and the Hibiscus Family produces only superior ovaries. Therefore, what's shown is a large flower bud. Also worth noting in the above picture are the stipular rings encircling the stem, very similar to what occurs on twigs of unrelated Magnolias.
The tree's smooth bark with splotchy lichens is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130qf.jpg
The Hibiscus Family is huge, but all the above features were distinctive enough that I felt sure of being able to identify the little tree. My confidence rested especially on the fact that the flower structure and tree form suggested that this species was a member of what used to be known as the Bombax Family, the Bombacaceae. Since genetic analysis has become possible, now the fairly small Bombax Family has been "sunken" to sub-group level in the Hibiscus Family. The best-known members of the old Bombax Family are the Ceiba and tropical Africa's Baobab tree.
It was QUARARIBEA FUNEBRIS, with no good English name but in Spanish variously known as Flor de Cacao (Cacao Flower, Cacao being the source of chocolate), Rosita de Cacao, and other names. The mention of Cacao in the names comes about from the use of the tree's dried, spicy flowers to flavor a thick, frothy, aromatic, chocolate-based, traditional drink called tejate or pozonque. The flowers and fruits also have been used in traditional medicine to control fevers and alleviate menstruation pains. The pressed and dried leaves are said to smell strongly of maple syrup. I'm astonished that during my flower dissection I never noted any odor at all.
The tree's chalky white or slightly yellowish wood is described as of good quality -- tough and strong, easy to work, takes a smooth finish -- but it doesn't stand up well when exposed to the elements.
Quararibea funebris is distributed along the Atlantic slope of southern and central Mexico south to Costa Rica.
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PIÑUELA FRUITS RIPENING
At https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/bromelia.htm we look at one of the northern Yucatan's two commonly occurring Piñuela species, which are large, terrestrial bromeliads closely related to the cultivated Pineapple. On that Page our local plants are shown producing their first lilac-colored flowers last March.
Though the resulting fruits began turning yellow in July, only now are they mature. I realized this when I noticed that something -- probably a rodent -- had begun chewing on some of the fruits, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130pp.jpg
The gnawed-on fruits are those a the picture's bottom with white, pulpy material exposed.
Interestingly, the flowers had been borne on erect stalks arising from the center of the plants' rosettes of long, stiff, spiny blades. When the fruits were just beginning to turn yellow, the stalks began leaning to one side. Now I can't find a single stalk that has not collapsed so that its heavy load of ripe fruits rests on the ground, as is the case at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130po.jpg
When I sampled the other Piñuela's ripe fruit, I found them sweet and a bit like pineapple, though very seedy. This species' fruits were slightly juicy but to me had very little sweetness or similarity to pineapple. You can see what a split-open mature fruit looks like at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130pq.jpg
I'll bet the forest rodents like them enough, though, to eat plenty, then in their intestines carry the seeds to new territories where in their poop they plant new Piñuelas.
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HARVESTING & POPPING AMARANTH SEEDS
At https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/amaranth.htm our nicely illustrated page shows and tells all about the handsome Red Amaranth plant that produces the amaranth seeds much of the health-food world is talking about nowadays. This week some plants were dropping their seeds, so I collected enough to try my luck at popping them, and making a protein-rich gruel of the kind indigenous Americans used to make.
Amaranth seeds are tiny, so you harvest them en masse. You can see them gathering atop my collecting platter -- an old wall-clock face retrieved from a trash dump -- at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130aa.jpg
With one hand the platter is held beneath a flowering head while the other hand shakes the head, beginning at the top and squeezing-and-releasing as you work downward, a little like milking a cow. Many dried-out flower parts and all kinds of insects fall onto the platter along with the seeds. The insects leave mostly on their own, and the chaff can be blown off easily. You can't get every tiny piece of chaff, but there's nothing wrong with having some extra fiber in your porridge.
The seeds are hard, as if encased in thin plastic shells, so if you eat them as they are when they fall from the flowering head, the vast majority will pass right through your body providing little nutritional value. Ancient indigenous Americans learned to pop the seeds, exactly as we now pop popcorn. Half a cup of unpopped seeds produces about a cup of popped ones.
Unless you have a microwave, popping them isn't as easy or fast as popping popcorn. If they sit in oil a few seconds too long, the seedcoats rupture too early and they don't puff well, but if they sit there a few seconds too long after puffing, they cinderize. You get around that by heating your lightly oiled pan or skillet to the point at which a small sprinkle of seeds pop withing three or four seconds of when they're dropped inside. Add only about a tablespoon each time, pouring them out before they burn, and do it again.
I stirred about a cup of popped amaranth seeds into hot water and had my gruel. It was OK, like somewhat crunchy grits or mush, but I think you'd have to be pretty hungry or desperately need protein in your diet to regularly go to all the trouble of making amaranth-seed gruel. Of course, it might be a different story if you have a microwave.
If the infrastructure goes down, lots of people will be needing protein sources, calories from carbohydrates, antioxidants and the like, so it's a good idea to keep the amaranth-seed-eating possibility in mind. In the tropics amaranth is easy to grow, and harvesting can be expedited by growing large numbers of plants and collecting the seeds systematically. For example, large heads can be cut and hung to dry, with plastic sheeting below them for the seeds to fall on.
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ROSELLE/ JAMAICA CALYXES EXPANDING
At https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/jamaica.htm we look at our Roselle or Jamaica plants, cultivated for their flowers' sepals, which bear glands filled with various acids that, when brewed with hot water, make a great tea. In the North, Red Zinger herbal tea is made by brewing these dried sepals, and down here Jamaica tea made from them is the favorite homebrewed tea.
Our page shows the flowers just as they were beginning to bloom. My efforts to brew tea with them were disappointing, and I assumed it was because the sepals hadn't grown enough. Now I'm sure that that was the case, because during the last two weeks the sepal-bearing calyxes of those early-blooming flowers have expanded greatly, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130jm.jpg
In that picture a new flower is opening at the top, right. Below that blossom, the corollas have already fallen from the flowers. The lower the remaining calyxes are on the stem, the earlier their flowers opened, and the larger their calyxes have grown. An older calyx with its sepals bulging with acid-filled grands is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130jn.jpg
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CREPE GINGER FLOWER'S YELLOW SPOT
Last October 4th as I hiked from the ruins of Palenque to the town of Palenque, in Chiapas state, in a moist place in deep shade among bushes along the road, something white caught my attention. It was the big flower shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/181130cs.jpg
At first, because it occurred in such an overgrown spot, I thought it must be a wild plant, but gradually it sank in that we'd met this flower before, planted as an ornamental at Hacienda Chichen in the Yucatan, profiled at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/crepegin.htm
It was the Crepe Ginger, Costus speciosus, somewhat similar to and related to the Ginger plant of ginger-root fame. It seems that nowadays most authors have shifted the species to a different genus, calling it Cheilocostus speciosus, and instead of assigning it to the Ginger Family, the Zingiberaceae, put it in the more recently erected Costus Family, the Costaceae. As with most things in the world, in taxonomy as time passes the old structures are abandoned and slowly we're getting a system so complex and elaborate that general relationships and trends become more and more obscured.
Anyway, when I photographed the Yucatan plants, somehow I failed to illustrate the yellow spot so evident in the Chiapas flower's center, so now we have a good shot of that.
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NATCHEZ NATURALIST NEWSLETTER, THE BOOK
"In early 1997, at age 49, I pulled a tiny, hangdog-looking trailer into the woods of a large plantation a few miles south of Natchez in southwestern Mississippi and began living there." That's how I began my book, Natchez Naturalist Newsletter, which most people say is my best, and I agree. I stayed at this "hermit camp" until September, 2004.
I've been thinking about that book because this week I've made it easier for people to read by setting up a copy on the Internet that will adjust to today's small hand-held screens, even those on cell phones. This new mobile option is available online at https://www.backyardnature.net/j/books/natnat/
At the camp where the book was written I had electricity because once a house had stood where I put the trailer, and a line still went there, though the old house had rotted down. I strung a line to a nearby hunter's camp, tapped onto their phone, and in those earlier days of the Internet, using a dial-up modem connection, established an ecotourism website. When the hunters weren't there I exchanged emails with ecotour operators all over the world, and placed on the Internet my weekly newsletter, back then called the Natchez Naturalist Newsletter.
During those Mississippi years, when sometimes entire months passed without my speaking a single word to a human, I told myself that I had a firm philosophical and spiritual basis for doing what I was doing. Still, I always felt a little insecure about the whole thing. Some people considered me little more than a tramp lazing away my life. Others treated me nicely but I could see that they had no idea why I'd abandoned regular US life and lived as I did. A few people, as always is the case, were just wonderful.
I was obliged to confront my insecurity about living as I did on the day George Hackett, a Senior Editor at Newsweek magazine in New York, called me. He was writing about the newly launched Google search engine, and had "Googled up" my Newsletter describing how I'd identified a birdnest using Google. Ostensibly my part of the story would be how even a birdnest could be identified with Google, but since they wanted a picture of me instead of someone else, I knew what the subtext was: "If this backwoods Mississippi yokel living in the smallest, most rundown trailer you've ever seen can do something interesting with Google, you can too... "
Was I to embarrass my family, community, Mississippi and even the US by letting the outside world see how I was living, with no mention of my philosophical or spiritual context? With great hesitation I told them to come on and take what pictures they needed.
The story with my picture taking up a goodly part of a whole page appeared in the December 16, 2002 issue of Newsweek, page 50. No friend or relation ever said a word to me about it. One family member, when asked, admitted that he'd seen it, but said nothing more. I got the message. A small image of what appeared is at https://www.backyardnature.net/j/newsweek.jpg
Now sixteen years have passed and finally I've decided that I was absolutely right to let them publish that picture -- if only because people always need to be reminded that in this world you can break away from the dominating cultural paradigm you're enmeshed in, if you want to, and if you're willing to pay the price socially.
Back then the need to point that out wasn't perfectly apparent to me. For one thing, in those days of Bill Clinton's much publicized sexual infidelities, the conservative, heartland US society I had withdrawn from was enjoying fair success in presenting itself as the squeaky clean Moral Majority with its good-for-all trickle-down economics. How could I explain why I'd withdrawn from such a well meaning, well functioning, society?
But now the Moral Majority has revealed its real colors by choosing as its leader and avatar Donald Trump.
So, I'm glad that in 2002 I let George Hackett send his camera crew to photograph me in my dingy little trailer in the Mississippi woods. It was the most in-your-face statement I could make that I was in rebellion against a certain world view, a certain way of being, that in my experience was unforgivable, and I didn't want any part of it to trickle down to me. By the way, I was living on my own money then, and still am, with no government or any other kinds of checks coming in.
This week I've made the Natchez Naturalist Newsletter book more accessible because I'm still in rebellion, more now than ever. And still I figure that it's worth reminding anyone who will listen that some of those options to the dominant cultural paradigms we happen to reside in are relatively simple and low-impact, inexpensive, are interesting and fun, and help you stay healthy and happy.
At https://www.backyardnature.net/j/books/ the Natchez Naturalist Newsletter book is available in other formats, some with my own drawings, plus others of my books also are freely available there.
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Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
All previous Newsletters are archived at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/.
