January 18, 2019

JUAN'S TOOTH-ACHE, WEEK TWO
Last week I described how our Maya worker Juan came to work with his cheek swollen from a tooth-ache, the cheek plastered with pieces of medicinal herb. He called the commonly occurring herb Hool-k'iim. It was Talinum paniculatum, and its story with pictures appears on our Talinum paniculatum page at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/talinum.htm

This week Juan got more serious about treating his pain by concocting a green paste made of three locally common herbs, and he was kind enough to let me document his various doings. His using three herbs instead of one sounds right to me because curanderos, or healers, I've known seldom relied on a single ingredient for their medicines. Their treatments usually consisted of three or more components.

First we went to the same place as before, to pick more Talinum paniculatum leaves. Then we walked just a few feet, to the other side of the shaded compost area, and picked a few leaves of Leaf-flower, Phyllanthus amarus, which we've profiled at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/leafflwr.htm

You can see Juan collecting his Leaf-flower leaves at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118mg.jpg

Notice that Juan isn't picking the whole plant, just removing leaves. The slender, wiry stem of Phyllanthus amarus is semi-woody, so Juan placed the stem between two fingers and raked upward, the leaves coming off individually. "Now the stem will grow new leaves," he said.

Next we gathered a few leaves of Square-stemmed Misteletoe, Phoradendron quadrangulare, parasitizing a nearby Bay Cedar, Guazuma ulmifolia. Our Square-stemmed Mistletoe page is at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/mistlet3.htm

You can see the entire collection of leaves from the three above species in Juan's hands at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118mh.jpg

On the picture's left side, the larger leaves at the bottom are from Talinum paniculatum. Atop them lie the Leaf-flower's leaves, and on the right side of the picture you see the mistletoes's blades.

On our pages for the above plants we've already noted that these species are recognized widely as medicinal plants. Studies have shown that, in rats, extracts of roots and leaves of Talinum paniculatum produced "estrogenic activity... which can be helpful in managing reproductive tissues regression during menopause... " Extracts of the Square-stemmed Mistletoe affect "cytotoxicity, apoptosis, tumour inhibition, induction of immune processes and antioxidant activity." Leaf-flower is much used in India's Ayurvedic system of medicine for a long list of problems, including, gonorrhea and other genital afflictions, diarrhea, dysentery, intermittent fevers, ophthalmopathy, scabies, ulcers and general wounds."

Now it was time to mash the leaves into a green paste. Normally Juan uses as a grinding bowl, or morter, half of a gourd-like jícara fruit from what's sometimes called the Calabash Tree (Crescentia cujete. That interesting tree is profiled at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/calabash.htm

However, Juan's jícara was filled with something else, so he used the bottom of a liter-size Coca-Cola plastic bottle, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118mi.jpg

The grinder, or pestle, is just a solid piece of a young tree trunk quickly carved with a machete blade. What happened at this point is a story worth highlighting in its own section, which follows.

*****

PREGNANT WOMEN AND ORANGE-PEEL SHAVINGS
While Juan was mashing leaves of the three medicinal plants into a tooth-ache-relieving paste, I remembered something: Earlier when he'd been telling me about the great pharmacopoeia of pain-killing medicines always growing around us, he'd showed me how to scrape a kind of mealy, moist powder off the surface of a Sour or Bitter Orange, Citrus x aurantium for adding to his various pastes.

"What about the Sour Orange scrapings?" I asked as he was finishing his grinding.

"No pregnant women here," he replied.

As with most folks in this area, Juan's first language is Maya. His Spanish is a jerky, irregularly conjugated kind, so partly with words and partly with hand gestures he told me that sometimes when you pass by a pregnant woman something on the order of "bad wind" or "the evil eye" transfers from her onto you, and maybe your arm will swell up and start hurting, and that's when you need the Sour Orange scrapings.

"Lemon juice will do, too," he continued. "And we have a smaller fruit like a lemon that's the best, but it's harder to find than a lemon. Sometimes people carry that lemon-like fruit in their pockets, and that wards off the problem, too."

*****

JUAN'S TOOTH-ACHE AND LEAF-CUTTER ANT MUD
The paste made of three medicinal plants should be used when freshly made, but sometimes you just don't have the time to go pick the leaves and mash them up several times a day. When you're in that situation, you can do this:

Go find a mound of dirt piled up by leafcutter ants. Our extensive leafcutter ant page is at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/leaf-cut.htm

On that page you'll see a large city of mounds. Here our mounds are smaller and appear alone, such as the one along my jogging trail shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118mf.jpg

Though the surrounding ground in that picture is hard-packed clay derived from limestone rock right below the soil's surface, the mound consists of tiny, dry crumbs removed from below one and-load at a time. In other words, the ants have changed the hard, almost brick-like dirt into a well aerated, crumbly medium. Maybe some ant trash or poop is included in it, but I couldn't see any. Often I've mixed a bit of organic matter into ant-mound dirt and produced a fine potting soil for germinating seeds.

The crumbly ant-dirt was mixed in water, in the bottom half of a plastic Coca-cola bottle, to produce the smooth, custard-like mud shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118md.jpg

Next Juan formed an applicator from a dry Huano palm frond and smeared the mud over his aching jaw, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118me.jpg

Wikipedia provides an extensive page on "medicinal clay," which is what Juan's ant-mud was, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicinal_clay

On that page, among topics covered are trace minerals made available by clay applied to the skin or ingested; of mud or wet clay poultices applied to the body to treat infections, indigestion and other problems; of various kinds of clay that used to be sold over the counter (Kaopectate was one); the use of Montmorillonite clay for skin conditions, and; much more.

The drying clay produces a cooling sensation that feels good on a toothache-swollen cheek. For a week Juan alternated between his three-herb paste and ant-mound mud, and sometimes used both.

At his writing his pain is gone, the cheek is no longer swollen, and he proudly speaks of his having cured his toothache.

*****

EK BALAM, THE PLANT
Thirty-four species of the genus Croton, in the Spurge/Euphorbia Family, are listed for the Yucatan Peninsula, and probably at least a dozen might occur in our area, maybe many more. But their taxonomy is a mess and they're hard to differentiate. So far I've only been fairly certain about one of the woody species, which I call the Tree Croton, whose page is at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/croton2.htm

Now I'm maybe 80% sure of a very common Croton species that often turns up here fencerows and along livestock trails through the woods. A typical plant is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118cr.jpg

Crotons bear unisexual flowers, and our fence species bears racemes of either all male or all female flowers, so the plants are "dioecious." You can see some young racemes of male flowers at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118cu.jpg

Already with that picture you can see what's true of most crotons: They're hairy. A male flower with numerous white stamens issuing from it wide open, hairy calyx is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118cv.jpg

A cluster of very different-looking young female flowers is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118cs.jpg

The white items are styles emerging from small, fuzzy-white ovaries. Each style ends in a curled stigma. A cluster of more mature ovaries with their styles shriveling and turning brown is seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118ct.jpg

The white-woolly undersurface of a leaf is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118cx.jpg

When croton leaves are plucked from a stem, usually a noticeable amount of clear or colored liquid issues from the break. In this species, the sap is orangish, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118cw.jpg

That picture also shows that the plants' hairiness is largely composed of branched or "stellate" hairs. Also, leaf bases in this species project back toward the stem a little, so they're "shallowly cordate." The sinus between the two back-pointing lobes is narrow, and forked veins radiate from the juncture of the blade with the petiole.

All these details appear to lead to the species CROTON CHICHENENSIS, which has no common name in English. I read that a Maya name for it is Ek Balam. However, my friend Juan calls it Oregano Kaash, meaning "Wild Oregano." However, they don't use Croton chichenensis as a spice, as they do with another species they call by that name.

In certain parts of the rancho's forest where livestock graze, many trees are dying because their bark is being eaten off, and the herbaceous layer has been almost removed. However, wherever enough sunlight breaks through, large, single-species patches of Croton chichenensis are left untouched by the animals. I sampled a leaf and didn't find it particularly bitter, so livestock avoids this species for some reason other than its bitterness. If this overgrazing continues, in a few years we may have large areas of pure Croton chichenensis.

Despite its abundance and weediness here, Croton chichenensis is endemic only to the Yucatan Peninsula.

*****

DUMBCANE
During my camping trip to Chiapas, on last October 5th something interesting turned up among much-shaded weeds along the road between Palenque town and Palenque ruins. It was a small cluster of aroids -- members of the Arum or Jack-in-the-pulpit Family -- with especially pretty leaves, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118df.jpg

In that picture, notice the flowering structure rising from amid the juncture of the leaves' petioles. A close-up is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190118dg.jpg

As typical of the Arum or Jack-in-the-pulpit Family, the flower structure consists of a green, leafy thing (the spathe) wrapped around a white, slender flower spike (the spadix). Those familiar with the North American wildflower Jack-in-the-pulpit will recognize the white spadix as Jack, and the green spathe as the pulpit. The white spadix is covered with hundreds of tiny, very closely crammed flowers. In this species, male flowers occupy the spadix's top, while female ones occur at the bottom, with a row of sterile flowers separating the two sexes.

I wasn't sure whether these roadside plants were wild native plants, or escaped ornamentals, or maybe relics from a long-disappeared home garden. In Chiapas' hot, humid lowlands, such pretty native plants can occur.

The plant's general form -- leaves arising from a short stem rooted in the ground (not a vine and not arboreal) -- and features of the spathe and spadix, suggested the genus Dieffenbachia. Dieffenbachia is native to tropical American, with certain species occurring in Mexico. I'm familiar with Dieffenbachia because some of its species are grown as potted plants in the Temperate Zone, and I used to have one.

This turned out to be DIEFFENBACHIA AMOENA, amoena meaning "charming" or "pleasing." Dieffenbachia amoena isn't native to Veracruz state, for which the family has been well documented, so I'm guessing that it's native to farther south than Chiapas. Also I'm assuming that someone planted them along the road to Palenque ruins, so they weren't growing wild.

All 56 or so species of Dieffenbachia can be called dumbcane, not because they're stupid, but because if you bite into them your mouth will instantly start hurting and cause such numbness that you'll be unable to speak, and in that sense "dumb," as in "deaf and dumb."

That's because Dieffenbachia cells contain needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals called raphides. I've tested the effect and it does feel like hot needles stabbing into the mouth, especially below the tongue. Sometimes people say that the compounds in Dieffenbachia are deadly poisonous, but they're not. They just hurt, the pain is temporary, and only rarely does reddening and swelling of tissue result. In most cases, symptoms can be treated with the usual household analgesics, antihistamines, or even medical charcoal.

By the way, the name Dieffenbachia honors a gardener of the 1800s, J.F. Dieffenbach, a German physician and botanist working at Schönbrunn gardens in Vienna, Austria.

*****

TREES
When I bike into Ek Balam to recharge my computer battery and do Internet, I check the world news. On the return trip to the rancho, my mind is unsettled because of what I've read -- so many self-destructive decisions being made, so many hurtful things done and said. Back at the hut, I always sit awhile upon arrival, to regain my sense of peace and well being, looking at the trees around me.

For, there's something therapeutic in just paying close attention to a tree. I note its system of branching, the overall visual texture of its leaves, the interplay of light and shadow both when breezes stir and when it's calm. And see how the species arrange themselves in this forest community, some in thin clay soil around the hut atop the little mound, others in looser, deeper soil of the depression below, some only in the transition zone. Once you pay attention, there are all kinds of things to notice about a tree.

One reason that simply looking and thinking about trees feels good might be partially explained by this fact: Every tree is an incarnation of an inspiration so simple, so pure and so magnanimous that it harmonizes with our own most lofty, seldom attained aspirations.

Think about it: A tree is firmly rooted in the Earth but from the trunk spreads outward three-dimensionally, ever refining its substance into ever greater intricacy and complexity, thus modeling the general evolution of the whole Universe. Moreover, the tree stands there preying on no other being, but rather for its own growth it conjures from air and water the carbohydrate of its own body, using solar energy. And during this magical process, it even offers to everyone life-sustaining oxygen, free for the taking.

Also, there's this:

Just look at these trees. Around the hut most trees were cut a few years ago, then resprouted from roots and stems, so that now most individual trees are represented by two, three or more slender trunks. These trunks compete with one another for resources. Trunks facing openings receive more sunlight and are more robust, while those sprouting on the shady side are weak and more likely to be diseased and bug-eaten. Many trees show scars where winds and falling branches have broken and battered them. Sometimes there's just a stub left, where a thoughtless worker in passing cut the young sapling just to have something to do with his sharp machete.

This tree leaning gamely toward sunlight, but about to tumble from its own weight into the pit, is just like someone I know. And who doesn't recognize someone close like that sapling stub who simply had bad luck as the worker with his machete passed by?

In other words, all through the forest, one tree after another quietly chants the human-humbling truth that "What you are is mostly a matter of the circumstances of your birth, and what kind of luck you've enjoyed since then."

How like a human community is a forest of trees! And that's another reason why looking at trees might feel good: It feels like visiting family, like being with people you understand, and who know all about you. You may not like all that trees tell you about yourself and life in general, but you'll sense from the beginning that they're being honest. In today's world, that's worth something, too.

On and on I could go like this, but once you have the hang of looking at trees, you'll see for yourself that just turning your face toward them with your eyes open makes you feel better, no matter what the news says.

*****

Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,

Jim

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