February 22, 2019

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BIG-EYED CATERPILLAR WEARING LIPSTICK
That's what I was invited to look at when Genesis resort owner Lee turned her computer screen toward me. You can see what I beheld at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222ct.jpg

A close-up of that grinning "face" is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222cs.jpg

And a better view of how the face fits at the front of the plump caterpillar body is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222cu.jpg

So, the "face" consists of markings on the caterpillar's back, immediately behind the head. In the above picture the actual head is kept bent down, touching the table. But of course if you're a caterpillar-eating bird or lizard, the painted-on face with those big eyes staring at you, and the red lips seeming ready to snap in your direction, may be unnerving enough to make you go away.

Genesis visitor Heather Holm of Canada had snapped the caterpillar's picture with her phone, emailed it to Lee, Lee forwarded it to me, and now you're seeing it, thanks to Heather.

Thinking it was a hornless hornworm, the caterpillar stage of a sphinx moth, family Sphingidae, on the Internet I made a quick image search on the key words "Sphingidae caterpillar Yucatan" and quickly came up with an image similar to ours, assigned to the genus Madoryx.

At sphinx moth expert Bill Oehlike's page listing the various species of Madoryx, the only species listed as occurring in Mexico is MADORYX PLUTONIUS DENTATUS, though for nearby Belize Madoryx bubastus butleri is mentioned.

I'll file our pictures on the Internet under Madoryx plutonius and maybe later an expert will confirm it. Hardly any information is available about its life history.

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BALLOON-VINES BALLOONING
Atop a tree near the garden there's an area about the size of a refrigerator covered with a tangle of vining stems and leaves among which hundreds of inch-wide (2.5cm), balloon-like, inflated capsular fruits are conspicuous, a small part of which is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222ch.jpg

In that picture notice that a few mature, brown bladders have lost all or part of their coverings, revealing small, spherical, black seeds suspended on thin, papery walls within the bladder. If you look closely, you can see immature flowering heads forming here and there on the vine, indicating that this vine produces lots of flowers and fruits over a longer period of time. The vine's twice-compound leaves are separated into three main subdivisions, which themselves are divided into three shallowly toothed leaflets, easier seen on a low-growing part of the vine shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222cd.jpg

Having a bladder handy we can open up and see better how the pea-like seed is attached to a partition inside the three-partitioned bladder, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222ce.jpg

Even a few flowers still can be found. Though only about 5mm long (3/16th inch), they display the interesting, somewhat asymmetrical form shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222cf.jpg

In that picture notice the vine's immature curling tendrils at the lower, left corner. The blossom displays four sepals and four petals, though it almost looks like eight white petals. The four sepals are slightly greenish on their backs and are modified to help the petals attract pollinators. The flower bears eight stamens of unequal length, the filaments tipped with tiny, white, pollen-producing anthers. The yellow, hairy item above the stamens at the picture's right side consists of petal appendages, apparently helping attract pollinators' attention to the inconspicuous white anthers. A different view is provided at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222cg.jpg

If this hadn't been such a well known, often encountered kind of vine, it might have been hard to identify because of the hard-to-see and sometimes hard-to-interpret features. However, when such "balloons" adorn such a vine, gardeners and plant lovers just know they have a balloon-vine, and that's the genus Cardiospermum, in the tropical/subtropical Soapberry Family, the Sapindaceae. Most members of that family are trees, shrubs or herbs, so the vining Cardiospermum is a little unusual in that family.

Knowing the genus, and having just three or four species of the genus in the Yucatan, it was easy to determine that here we have CARDIOSPERMUM CORINDUM. That's a good old Linneaus name, which indicates that the earliest European explorers in the Americas quickly ran into it. The species is distributed throughout tropical America as well as arid southern Africa. Species in the genus, besides being called balloon-vine, also sometimes are known as heartseed and -- hard to imagine -- love in a puff.

You might be interested in comparing our Cardiospermum corindum to a similarly wide-ranging and well known balloon-vine species encountered in upland Querétaro, Cardiospermum halicacabum, at https://www.backyardnature.net/q/balloon.htm

I find Cardiospermum corindum listed as a medicinal plant for the Yucatan, without indication of its use. However I read that Cardiospermum seed extracts are included in skin creams that claim to treat exzema and other skin conditions.

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EATING STICK-TIGHT LEAVES
Last week a Canadian herbalist visited the ranch so I could help her learn how to identify plants. She'd already figured out for herself that if she were to collect herbs from the wild for her herbal medicine practice, she needed to identify her plants properly, as made clear on our "Three Steps to Learning about Nature" page at https://www.backyardnature.net/listopen.htm

Identifying plants requires disciplined, systematic study, especially of the structure of flowers and fruits, and the names of the parts. Disciplined, systematic study of flowers and fruits, however, is a joy, for it's a kind of meditation. In my personal life I've found the learning process itself has been much more important in several ways than the information sought through that learning.

My friend had just come from upland Chiapas where she'd met the genus Bidens, species of which often are called Stick-tights because they produce small fruits atop which needle-like spines point upward. When an animal passes by, the spiny fruits hitch a ride on fur or trouser leg. Apparently herbalists are learning that species of the genus Bidens are exceptionally medicinal, especially for the lungs and mucous membrane protection.

My visitor left me some photocopied pages detailing uses of the genus Bidens, and the list was formidable: Antimalarial, antibacterial, antimicrobial, antidysenteric, diuretic, hepatoprotective, hypotensive, anti-inflammatory, hypoglycemic, antidiabetic, styptic, vulnerary, immunomodulant, antiseptic, neuroprotectant, blood tonic, astringent, carminative, galoctogogue, mucous membrane tonic, prostaglandi synthesis inhibitor. It's the "most potent PGE2 plant inhibitor" known, whatever that means.

I'm used to seeing long lists of traditional medicinal uses for species for which lab analysis can't find any support, so I didn't get too excited. However, on the day my friend left I got caught biking in a very unusual chilly rain, and had to wear wet clothing for several hours. That gave me a cold. When the cold got to the lung-clogged, nose-dripping stage I remembered that the genus Bidens was especially good for the "lungs and mucous membrane protection." Nothing was said about treating colds, but I knew where several kilometers of weedy roadside were dominated by a species of the genus Bidens, so what the heck?

Several Bidens species are listed for the Yucatan, so when I went to collect my herbage I took pictures of important features, to help in ID later. A flowering branch emerging from a dense tangle of various weed species is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222bi.jpg

The stems were squared in cross section, with leaves arising opposite one another, and the larger leaves were usually three parted, or trifoliate, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222bj.jpg

A blossom close-up, displaying classic features of the Aster or Composite Family, the Asteraceae, with white, petal-like ray flowers and yellow, cylindrical disc flowers tightly packed into an "eye," is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222bk.jpg

The shape and disposition of green, leafy "bracts" forming a kind of bowl below the head often is important, so that's shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222bl.jpg

Some of the older heads already had ejected their corollas, leaving only the ovaries developing into classic stick-tight fruits, seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222bm.jpg

Those details were enough to figure out that this was BIDENS ALBA, a Stick-tight species native from Florida and the Caribbean area south through eastern and southern Mexico to Honduras, and then with another population in northern and western South America. That name suited me fine, because my friend's photocopied pages mentioned Bidens alba as one of the more potent Bidens species.

I'd read on those pages that one problem with using Bidens medicinally is that drying the leaves for storage destroys much of their potency, as does heat. Alcohol extracts are much more effective than watery "teas." There on the highway north of Temozón, my lungs clogged and my nose running, I figured that theres wasn't any need to prepare a tincture of the leaves at all. From plants a bit away from the road, I just grabbed a couple of handfuls of soft, young herbage, and ate them. There was little taste, good or bad. They weren't fibrous or brittle, not good not bad.

Within a couple of hours my nose stopped running and by the time I went to bed my lungs were much improved. Was it the Bidens, or just that time during a cold when the symptoms go away? Or maybe the placebo effect. That's how it always is, one just never knows until it's experienced again and again.

For those up north who think they've seen this plant under the name Bidens pilosa, here's the story:

Our Bidens alba belongs to a cluster of three very closely species, the other two being B. odorata and B. pilosa. The Flora of North America lumps our Bidens alba with the common roadside stick-tight in the US, Bidens pilosa, but down here people who know the species best say that they're different, and on this I'm with the Mexicans. They have different chromosome numbers. I find that bracts beneath heads of our Bidens alba are rounded-tipped, while those of Bidens pilosa are narrower and more sharp pointed.

One reason that so many Bidens alba plants ornament the roadside north of Temozón is that each plant can produce between 3000-6000 one-seeded fruits, which can remain viable for up to five years.

Interestingly, Bidens alba is super-abundant along the highway north of Temozón, but for the four kilometers between the rancho and Ek Balam there's not a single one. I believe it's because the Temozón highway, being important for commerce, is maintained on a schedule, while locally things are cut back only when enough of the local citizenry make a fuss or there's a wreck. The needs of Bidens are clearly met on the highway north of Temozón, but the species just can't deal with erratic disturbances.

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FLOWERING SYNGONIUM VINE
Last October 3rd when I was camping in Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, climbing a tree along the entry road to Palenque National Park there was a Syngonium vine. Syngonium's, members of the Aroid or Jack-in-the-pulpit Family, produce distinctive, palmately compound leaves like those shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222sy.jpg

Mostly the flowering had already passed, just leaving a few fruiting heads, some shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222sz.jpg

However, there was at least one flowering head still open, seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190222s2.jpg

Distinguishing species of the genus Syngonium can be hard, so I was glad to have available mature leaves, fruiting and flowering heads. Best I can tell, this is Syngonium podophyllum, distinguished from the very similar S. angustatum, among other things, by its broader leaflet sections and the silvery sheen, or glaucescence, visible in some of the vegetative parts.

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DO ANIMALS THINK & HAVE FEELINGS?
The quickest way to answer that is to turn to the person nearest to you and ask: "Do you think and have feelings?"

For, humans are animals. The concept that somehow Homo sapiens is set apart from other animals and indeed all other things in the Universe is a dangerous, unfounded religious notion.

Though it seems strange to me that people would even consider the question, scientific works abound proving that other animals beside humans feel as well as think. On the Internet, search on the question "Do animals have feelings?" Or, "Can animals think?"

One of many recent reviews of the question is an article by Ross Andersen in The Atlantic entitled What The Crow Knows. It's a little heavy on bird hospitals, Jainism and such, but still it thoughtfully addresses new scientific insights.

When I was a kid on the Kentucky farm I saw how catfish writhed with pain when I worked hooks from their mouths or guts. I knew old hens both of the self-centered and generous types, and right now, living with two dogs, every day I see impressive thinking and feeling conducted by those furry heads. How can people still be asking whether animals think and feel?

Once it's decided that, yes, other animals think and feel, where does one go from there?

A good beginning point is to reflect that a chimpanzee may be more innovative and context-aware than a human baby or an old person with Alzheimers. Think of drunks, people on drugs, schizophrenics, hypnotized people, religious and political fanatics in a world where hawk minds analyze visual stimuli gathered from a field far below, pinpoint a tiny mouse there, and react much quicker than any human. Coyotes howling beneath a full moon at the very least express some feelings. The phenomena of thinking and feeling are diffuse, overlapping states that come and go and issue from a near-infinite number of points in the multidimensional reality around us.

Knowing that humans coexist on this planet with so many other thinking, feeling animals is a beautiful experience. It's like discovering oneself to be a melody within a lush, vast symphony of many melodies, every tone in every melody providing a context for and influencing every other.

The cricket in the bush looking at us of course doesn't see a focused image or react to our image in any recognizable human way. Maybe the cricket's tiny compound eyes register us as a moving shadow, and the cricket's response is more mechanical and mathematical than anything like human curiosity or foreboding. Movement of a certain size and a certain quickness = flight response.

Such thinking and feeling is only a tiny flash of a hint of mentality and emotional response, but it's something, and something perfect for exactly where and how it is at that exact moment, and there's this oceanic symphony of brother, sister, mother, uncle, neighbor scintillating flickers of thinking and feeling all flowing along with us toward some yet undetermined finale.

I don't address the situation of the thinking, feeling human who recognizes all this in today's world where so many thinking, feeling, non-human beings are succumbing because of human behavior.

This is not a world where thinking, feeling beings can carry their thoughts and feelings very far, and survive.

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Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,

Jim

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