MYSTERIOUS DORSTENIA

Back in the early 70s I served as the naturalist on archaeological tours in Guatemala's Petén region. We specialized in visiting Maya ruins accessible only by boat and mule train, for in those days few roads penetrated much of the Petén. The expedition leader was an archaeologist who tried to interpret certain glyphs found on stone stele always present around ruins. Someplace he got the idea that one especially strange glyph represented a plant that always grew on the ruins. You might hike through marshy "jungle" for days not seeing the plant, but the moment you arrived at a ruin, this plant would be growing all over the ruin's limestone-block pyramids, temples and stele.

My opinion was that if any plant would was eligible for inclusion in Maya iconography, it was this one. Not only because of its almost uncanny attraction for sacred Maya temples, but also because anyone familiar with how normal flowers are "supposed" to look -- calyx with five sepals, corolla with five petals, ovary surrounded by stamens, etc. -- this little plant broke all the rules. You can see what I mean below:

That's a DORSTENIA CONTRAJERVA growing on a limestone wall at the bottom of Black Vulture Cenote. Surely the two green "flowers" are unlike anything you've ever seen.

When you realize that Dorstenia belongs to the Fig Family, the Moraceae, many of you will instantly understand what's going on with Dorstenia's "flowers." For, you'll remember that fig "fruits" are weird affairs in which the actual fig flowers are tiny things strewn across the INTERIOR SURFACE of the empty-centered, ovate fig. For a more detailed look at fig-fruit anatomy, check out my Multiple Fruit Page at http://www.backyardnature.net/frt_mult.htm.

Well, those green "flowers" in the Dorstenia picture are basically what you get if you split open a fig and press it flat so that all the tiny flowers previously on the fig's interior now occupy one side of the flat-pressed thing. Each of those star-like items that seem like they should be flowers is actually a platform with tiny flowers on one side, and green, vegetative receptacle on the other.

The platform's shape -- a star with the top arm bent forward -- is approximately what the glyph looked like the archeologist was interested in.

Nearly always such strange-looking plants are considered as medicinal or magical by local people, and Dorstenia certainly has that reputation. In fact, throughout most of its distribution in Mexico it's called Contrayerba, or "against-herb," suggesting that it'll work against many maladies. Also it's called Yerba Santa, or "Blessed Herb," a name applied to many particularly virtuous herbs. Martinez's Las Plantas Medicinales de Mexico reports it as providing traditional remedies for everything from toothaches to tumors to snakebite.

I'd never seen Dorstenia this far north. I thought it was far too arid here for it. However, the moist shelter at the bottom of Black Vulture Cenote does feel pretty much like the humid, sepulchral "jungle" that at least once mantled northern Guatemala.