Jim Conrad's Naturalist Newsletter of April 27, 2019
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THE MAYAN BACKYARD MEDICINAL SAGE
Even today when the average Maya teenager walks around looking at cellphone screens, medicinal plants commonly are grown in people's backyards. A while back a sprig of one of the most frequently grown was given me, I planted it in my own little garden spot, and now it's about a meter tall (1 yard) and flowering, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427aa.jpg
In that picture notice that the plant not only spreads, but -- as seen by a sprout emerging beyond the plant's bamboo bed margin on the right -- it issues underground rhizomes, which sprout along their length. This is a good field mark helping separate it from numerous look-alike species.
From the first the plant was easy to recognize as a kind of sage of the Sagebrush kind -- a species of the big genus Artemisia, of the huge Composite or Aster Family, the Asteraceae. Besides Sagebrush, other species of Artemisia may be referred to as wormwoods or mugworts, plus the popular garden herb known as Tarragon is an Artemisia species.
The small flowering heads arranged in slender panicles was typical of Artemisia species, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427ac.jpg
Unlike flowering heads of most species in the Composite Family, individual flowering heads of Artemisia species bear no strap-shaped ray florets along the head's border, but rather only tiny, cylindrical disc flowers. These are crammed together within a cuplike involucre consisting of only a few rounded, white-hairy bracts, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427ad.jpg
That dense mantle of cobwebby, white hairiness covers our plant's entire body, though the upper sides of leaves are less hairy, surely to encourage photosynthesis, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427ab.jpg
The shape of that leaf is distinctive, too -- very deeply lobed, the lobes slender, and the leaves themselves often arising amid tufts of much smaller leaves.
Maybe the most revealing identification feature for the genus Artemisia, however, doesn't show in any of the above photos: the sage odor of the plant's crushed herbage.
A 2012 publication entitled El Huerto Familiar del Sureste de México ("The Family Garden of Southeastern Mexico"), edited by Ramón Mariaca Méndez, lists four Artemisia species grown for medicinal purposes: Artemisia absinthium, A. laciniata, A. ludoviciana and Artemisia mexicana.
Our plant is ARTEMISIA LUDOVICIANA, native to pine and oak forests of the Mexican highlands, north throughout much of North America, mainly the western and central parts. In fact, we've seen it in Texas, our page for it at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/h/whitsage.htm
There we call it White Sage, but it's known by several names, including Silver Sage, Silver Wormwood, Western Mugwort, Louisiana Wormwood, White Sagebrush and Gray Sagewort. The Texas plants display a few subtle differences from ours. Seven subspecies of Artemisia ludoviciana are recognized, ours being subsp. mexicana.
On our page for the Texas plant several traditional medicinal uses is given, but back when those plants were encountered I had no idea that here in the Yucatan, well beyond the species' native distribution, they'd be so highly regarded by the Maya for their curative power.
Mainly the Maya tell me that Artemisia ludoviciana is for upset stomach. However, there's a large body of literature citing many other uses, such as a page at the MedicinalPlants.US website. That page begins with reports about the plant by the earliest Spanish invaders in Mexico during the 1500s. In ends with recent findings that "... the ethanolic extract of the aerial parts is a potent and specific inhibitor of the transcription factor NF-kB," whatever that means. The page sums up the current attitude toward the medicinal value of Artemisia ludoviciana by saying that "The plant is regarded to possess spasmolytic and antihelmintic properties, but the experimental basis for this is insufficient."
I personally plan to make a tea of my plant's flowering head, to take advantage of its possible antihelmintic properties for my yearly flushing out of intestinal worms.
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THE CECROPIA WITH LONG-DANGLING FRUITING BODIES
At https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/cecropia.htm we look at the fast-growing, very distinctive-looking and easy-to-recognize, handsome, "weed tree" variously known as the Cecropia, Guarumo, Trumpet Tree, Umbrella Tree, Snakewood, and by other names. It bears so many names because it's so conspicuous along roadsides and in weedy fields throughout most of humid, lowland tropical America, where it's native, plus it's escaped as an invasive in many other tropical countries wordwide. It's Cecropia peltata," a good old Linneaus name.
This month on April 2 as I hiked out of Ceibal Archaeological Park about 15kms east of Sayaxché in northern Guatemala's Petén department, a second Cecropia species turned up, one I've been looking for for a long time. It's shown silhouetted against a dense morning fog at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427c1.jpg
Though the tree's general form, its deeply palmately lobed leaves and roadside habitat were very similar to Cecropia peltata, even at a distance it was clearly a different species. The key field mark separating it from Cecropia peltata is the dangling items looking like limp hands with extremely slender fingers. Those are flowering heads, or inflorescences, composed of downward-hanging spikes of tiny female flower ovaries maturing into many crammed-together fruits. A closer look is afforded of both flowering structures and leaves at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427c0.jpg
If you compare this cecropia's flowering/fruiting structures with those on our Cecropia peltata page, you'll see that the ones of this Guatemalan species are much longer and narrower. Also, the leaves of the Guatemalan species tend to have more lobes that are more slender.
Our Guatemalan species is CECROPIA OBTUSIFOLIA, going by the same English names as Cecropia peltata. Like the other Cecropia, Cecropia obtusifolia is native throughout much of tropical America, and similarly is invasive in other tropical countries. However, at least in our area, it doesn't seem to be as successful in invading disturbed habitat as Cecropia peltata.
In the Yucatan, both cecropia species are absent in the peninsula's arid northwestern corner. At my present home in central Yucatan north of Valladolid, Cecropia peltata commonly occurs in moist sinkholes, or cenotes, and sometimes in especially humid, disturbed upland spots. However, the presently considered Cecropia obtusifolia is absent. According to records of collected plants, it appears that both species occur regularly in the rainier eastern and southern Yucatan. In short, the present Cecropia obtusifolia seems to need more rainfall than Cecropia peltata.
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COJOBA TREE WITH INTERESTING FRUITS
Earlier this month, on April 3rd, as I wandered the campground of El Rosario National Park in northern Guatemala's lowland Petén department, on the east side of Sayaxché, two brightly red, legume-type fruits spiraling around one another like DNA's double helix turned up on the ground beneath a big tree, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427co.jpg
Often we've seen such curling, red-turning legumes on Bean-Family trees known as Blackbeads (because of their hard, shiny and black beans). Our page for the commonly occurring Blackbead tree is at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/pithecel.htm
That Blackbead species is a member of the big genus Pithecellobium. Paul Standley and Julian Steyermark in 1946 recognized about 30 Pithecellobium species for Guatemala, and this campground tree's fruit looked a little different from those of the common species. Happily, the big tree overhead bore not only the same red, spiraling legumes, but also distinctively large, twice-pinnately compound leaves with very many small leaflets -- very different from the common species -- as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427cp.jpg
The curling legumes appear at the center of the above picture.
In the end, it turns out that our big tree in Guatemala doesn't belong to the assumed genus Pithecellobium -- though it did until recently, and earlier was placed in the genera Mimosa and Acacia as well. Nowadays the gene sequencers have decided that it's unusual enough to merit assignment to yet another genus, where it's known as COJOBA ARBOREA. It's distributed from southern Mexico and the Caribbean area south through Central America to Bolivia in South America. It inhabits moist or wet forest, and often appears on soil derived from limestone, as was the case with ours.
Cojoba arborea bears no generally accepted English name, though sometimes its valuable wood is exported under the name of "Bahama sabicu." The tree can grow to about 18m high (59ft).
Several similar species exist. Important field marks leading to Cojoba arborea include the large leaves with many small leaflets, and the legumes tending to occur in pairs, often winding around one another, and attached to a short, woody stem, as shown in our picture.
Apparently the seeds of Cojoba arborea are adapted for germination as soon as they fall. I read that after ten days of storage 20% of the seeds had lost their viability, and after 25 days 100% were dead. Fresh seeds show a 90% germination rate on soil containing 30% organic matter.
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SILVERPUFF FLOWERING
Earlier this month, on April 3rd, as I wandered the campground of El Rosario National Park in northern Guatemala's lowland Petén department, on the east side of Sayaxché, on the bank right next to the lake below the campground, it looked like an old friend had taken up residence. You can my friend's long, slender neck kinked at the top and bearing a downward nodding head at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427ch.jpg
This plant's general growth pattern -- what appears to be a flowering head atop a long, slender stem, or scape, emerging from a rosette of leaves at the base -- suggests the enormous Composite or Aster Family, the Asteraceae. Dandelions, for instance, are members of the family and display such a pattern. The flowering head on our Guatemala plant was a little past its time, about to burst into a Dandelion-puffball-like head of white-parachuted, achene-type fruits, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427ci.jpg
That picture nicely shows the narrow, green, overlapping bracts forming a cup-like structure, the involucre, below the emerging seed head. On another plant, an older head had its bracts turned back, revealing the brown achenes, and the achene's white fuzz that later would dry out and fluff, and serve as wind-catching parachutes -- all very similar to Dandelion fruiting heads -- shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427ck.jpg
Surprisingly, however, a close look inside a flowering head dispelled any ideas that our Guatemala plant might be closely related to the Dandelion. Some convergent evolution has been going on here. You can see what I mean at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427cj.jpg
Dandelions belong to that tribe of Composite Family members whose flowering heads consist only of flat, strap-shaped, ray-type florets. In the above picture, white ray florets -- each tipped with tiny, shallow "teeth"-- occur along the flowering area's perimeter, but also inside the perimeter, many cylindrical, disc-type florets are crammed together to form the "eye." Our Guatemalan plant's heads bear both ray and disc florets, and thus it occupies a branch of the Aster Family phylogenetic tree well apart from the dandelions.
All these features were just like those displayed by plants we got to know back in Texas, known as Silverpuffs, Chaptalia texana. You can review our Texas plant at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/h/silvpuff.htm
Even our Guatemala plant's rosette of leaves looked like those of the Texas Silverpuff, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427cl.jpg
It turns out that sometimes the Texas plants, Chaptalia texana, have been regarded as a variety of our Guatemalan taxon, which is CHAPTALIA NUTANS. Chaptalia nutans is widely distributed from the southwestern US south through Mexico and Central America, deep into South Ameirca, so maybe they are indeed the same species.
If you do a search on Chaptalia nutans, you'll find that in English sometimes it's referred to as "I'm Not Happy," apparently taken from the Spanish name "No Soy Feliz." The name may result from its medicinal and magical use in some places as an antidepressant, as among the Guaraní of Paraguay.
With regard to other medicinal uses, it's as I reported for the Texas species, or variety, that it "... has been used traditionally for 'cleansing the blood and digestive system as part of an aphrodisiac,' plus so many other uses are documented that you wonder if any are valid."
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CANISTEL FLOWERING
At https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/canistel.htm we've looked at a tree often planted in Yucatan backyards, because of its delicious, golden, apple-size fruits tasting a little like very sweet sweet potatoes, the Canistel. Canistel, native to southern Mexico and Central America, is planted in the tropics worldwide. Presently, in a sheltered cenote, or sinkhole, on the rancho, a planted Canistel is flowering, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427pt.jpg
Very few of those blossoms will produce fruits. The interesting, somewhat understated flowers are seen up close at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427pu.jpg
In that picture, flowers appear at various stages of development. A flower bearing a greenish corolla with five or six rounded lobes appears dangling at the image's bottom, left. A little below the picture's center, a more developed blossom has lost its corolla, leaving the expanding ovary's stigma and style protruding above the enveloping calyx. A fallen corolla showing stamens and staminodes attached to the corolla's interior wall is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427pv.jpg
The stamens are tipped with dark, pollen-releasing anthers, and arise below the lobes' middles, while the sterile staminodes arise between the lobes. These are features distinguishing flowers of the Sapodilla or Sapote Family, the mostly tropical Sapotaceae, to which Canistel belongs.
Canistel is Pouteria campechiana. Canistel trees bearing flowers but not fruits easily can be confused with other members of the genus Pouteria, especially the Lucuma tree, Pouteria lucuma, which also often is planted. However, a botanical drawing at the Useful Tropical Plants website shows the staminode tips of Lucuma tree corollas equaling the height of the corolla lobes, while staminode tips on our Canistel corolla stay well below the corolla lobe tips. Such obscure details can be of determinative in botany.
The Canistel's genus Pouteria is a good-size one, often having species added to or removed from it. Traditionally taxonomists have thought of it as a "wastebasket taxon," a genus to dump species into that don't seem to fit better anyplace else. The Pouteria page at the Worldwidefruits.com website lists 149 Pouteria species.
To help confirm the identification, our Canistel's leaf is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190427pw.jpg
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HERON CHAOS
Most of the year the only heron-type bird seen in the Yucatan's interior, where no above-ground rivers or lakes occur, are Cattle Egrets, following cattle around. Lately, however, something different has been turning up at the rancho's tiny cement-lined pond, which teems with mosquito fish, tadpoles and aquatic insect larvae.
It's a Green or Green-backed Heron, in much of North America the most commonly seen summer-visiting heron in watery places. It's a handsome bird, with a rich chestnut face, neck and chest, blackish green upperparts, and yellowish to reddish-orange legs. Nearly all I ever see of the rancho's bird, however, is a silent shadow fleeing the moment I appear, almost ghostlike.
Along the Yucatan's coasts, Green-backed Herons frequent marshes, sandy banks, mangrove edges, muddy islands emerging at low tides, and such, but here in the arid interior there's almost nothing for them except these very isolated, little ponds. Something special is going on inside the head of any Green-backed Heron visiting here. What it is that causes a bird to break away from his brothers and sisters and a comfortable-feeling habitat, to wander far inland, over mile after mile of parched ranchland, burning abandoned cornfields, scrubland and patchy thornforest?
Probably it's enough to remember that in any population of higher animal always there are individuals with more or less wanderlust or curiosity than others -- individuals at the opposite ends of the bell curves of predisposition to wander. You can see why a certain added measure of wanderlust might be programmed into a certain small number of a specie's members. If a hurricane should wipe out the herons' coastal habitat, for example, it would be to the species' benefit for a few birds to know where isolated ponds in the interior might offer refugle. If a disease decimates the Green-backed Heron coastal population, it'd be good to have a few birds who miss the whole plague while hanging out in the interior.
Despite these perfectly reasonable explanations for our bird's visit, on these rare mornings when I glimpse our little pond's visiting heron, I like to think he might be here for another reason: Maybe our bird has gone astray because he's a local expression of that theoretical element of chaos without which -- the calculations of astrophysicists assure us -- the ways of the Universe simply can't be explained.
I want to believe that our unsociable shadow of a disoriented bird represents a local expression of utterly impersonal, randomly smiting, always discombobulating chaos because chaos gets things done, one way or another. And it's the only agency I can think of with a proven history of consistently screwing up such things as the fine-tuned, well-moneyed political and economic systems currently threatening Life on Earth.
Traditionally, indigenous Americans showed their respect for chaos by giving it a face in everyday life, telling stories to one another about Coyote the Trickster, or a similar joking troublemaker. The Maya around me here have their Alux, even today, making eggs roll off tables, inviting coatis into cornfields for midnight feasts, and even sometimes coming out of nowhere with murderous intentions.
My own culture is so impoverished of traditional wisdom that we have nothing like Coyote or Alux. Clumsily, here I can only invoke the concept in general -- of chaos of the wandering Green-backed Heron kind.
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Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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