Mayan ethnobotany, agriculture, crops, foods, sacred plants, flowers, trees of Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and Honduras.

This web site is for individuals interested in the iconography of flowers in Mayan art

Mayan murals, stelae sculptures, architectural facades, and painted or incised pottery are decorated with flowers, fruits, vegetables, and sacred trees. Likewise there are depictions in Mayan art of insects, birds, fish, turtles, reptiles, and diverse other species.

If you took every single identification of every plant and animal in the monographs and articles of the last 100 years (and sadly even in the past 40 years), too many of the identifications are not correct. So a major goal of this web site is to provide the raw material: the close-up photos of the flowers and plant parts so that botanists as well as iconographers can have a better chance at recognizing the actual species.

A good example of the rare instances of proper identification is the work of botanist Charles Zidar (Missouri Botanical Garden). But about 95% of the identifications of insects in Mayan art are incorrect. And I bet over 50% of the identifications of flowers (by writers other than Zidar) are in error as well. All of these identifications will be re-written, with photographic evidence, as this web site expands to cover all the pertinent species.

English name: Water lily. Spanish Name: Lirio de Agua. Latin name: Nymphaea ampla. Photo by: Jaime Leonardo, staff photographer 2007-2011 at FLAAR Mesoamerica

If you are an epigrapher, we will also work to provide material useful to you

It is primarily bats, turtles, deer, felines and birds that are the natural species depicted in Mayan hieroglyphs, so most of our work on the iconography of Mayan hieroglyphic writing will be in our separate web site on ethnozoology. But there are occasional flowers and ceiba spines in Mayan hieroglyphs, so we also cover Mayan epigraphy related to plants.

We are building a second, separate, website to cover Mayan ethnozoology. We have been doing extensive photography of insects, arachnids, fish, turtles, bats, felines, venomous toads and other creatures that were of interest to the Classic Maya over the last several years. This Mayan ethnozoology web site should be launched hopefully by the first week of July.

This resource is dedicated to botanists and botany students,

During the 1970's through 1980's, hundreds of students and dozens of professors and researchers came to Guatemala and Mexico to study the plants and animals. They had experiences with local plants and animals they will remember their entire life.

Today, due to the economic recession, it is harder for botanists and students to get to Latin America. And security is a growing concern. So we hope our photographs, notes, and bibliographies will assist botanists and students to experience Guatemala at least via photographs. And over time, we hope they will be able to encounter the plants and animals and ecology of Central America in person.

Costa Rica has the best reputation for national parks and eco-tourism, but frankly Guatemala is so beautiful I still enjoy every second I am in this country. The people in the villages throughout Guatemala are friendly and helpful. Botanists such as Mirtha Cano and Priscila Sandoval share their knowledge. Local people who know their local flowers and unusual fruits for decades, such as Julian Mariona, have shared their information and experience with us every time we visit him at Posada Caribe, one hour upstream from Sayaxche, Petén.

We will tend to publish in PowerPoint, to assist both professors and students

Although you can project a PDF in a classroom, we feel that the horizontal format of a PPT file will be more useful to instructors and students, as well as to interested lay people. The horizontal format of a PowerPoint slide allows us to show more plants side-by-side.

Our first editions will be primarily photographs

We have so many thousands of photographs, that we will prefer to issue these images of flowers, fruits, and vegetables first. Then later we will add more text.

We feel that a picture is truly worth more than a thousand words.

If you are an avid gardener, feel welcome to visit our web site

Whether you are gardening in Antigua Guatemala, Petén, or California, Florida, or Asia, you might enjoy adding some sacred Mayan flowers, or healthy Mayan fruits and vegetables to your garden.

Gardener holding a Fucsia, Fuchsia hybrida. Chilasco, Cobán Guatemala August 2011

For students of religion obviously we wish to provide you useful facts

Incense is a major part of Mayan ethnobotany. Sacred flowers are used in rituals. So the study of religion and plants go together in most cultures, especially prehispanic.

Medicinal plants are helpful to everyone

Producing medicinal plants provides jobs and incomes for the entire production chain. And some medicinal plants provide fewer side affects than potent modern chemical medicines. So the study of medicinal plants is helpful to many people.

But equally well, many native "medicinal" plants are toxic so we do not recommend experimenting on your own.

There are already abundant books and articles on medicinal plants of Mexico and medicinal plants of Guatemala, so medicinal plants are much better known than sacred plants or even edible plants. Thus our focus is on those medicinal plants which also have other uses: for example, manitas, Chiranthodendron pentadactylon, is a major medicinal plant (especially in Verapaz areas) but was a flavoring for cacao drinks a thousand years ago.

For economic development, our comments on species are intended to help

There are endless opportunities for economic development by creating projects whereby botanists and realistic business people provide suggestions to local people on how the local people can grow indigenous plants to improve their livelihood. Note that merely suggesting to local people about some plant is not enough: a realistic business partner should be part of the team.

FLAAR comes from a background in academia but a long time ago we left the "ivory tower" and learned about the real world outside the university walls. In advanced digital imaging FLAAR is a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and major corporations in Europe, Canada, Korea, China, and Taiwan. We would enjoy being able to provide our experience to local villages in Guatemala for them to market indigenous plants first nationally and then internationally. As soon as funding would be available, we are ready, able, and willing to work with joint ventures.

Artist woman showing hand made basket in San Rafael Chilascó, Guatemala August 2011

Source: http://www.maya-ethnobotany.org/

Ethnobotany in Rayones, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

Trough collections of plants and interviews with 110 individuals, an ethnobotanical study was conducted in order to determine the knowledge and use plant species in Rayones, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The aim of this study was to record all useful plants and their uses, to know whether differences exist in the knowledge about the number of species and uses between women and men, and to know if there is a correlation between the age of individuals and knowledge of species and their uses. 

Methods: A total of 110 persons were interviewed (56 men, 56 women).

Semistructured interviews were carried out. The data were analyzed by means of Student t test and the Pearson Correlation Coeficient. 

Results: A total of 252 species, 228 genera and 91 families of vascular plants were recorded.

Astraceae, Fabaceae and are the most important families with useful species and Agave and Opuntia are the genera with the highest number of useful species. One hundred and thirty six species are considered as medicinal.

Agave, Acacia and Citrus are the genera with the highest number of medicinal species. Other uses includes edible, spiritual rituals, construction and ornamentals.

There was a non-significant correlation between the person's age and number of species, but a significant very low negative correlation between the person's age and number of uses was found. 

Conclusions: Knowing their medicinal uses is an important issue for the people of Rayones. Boiling and preparing infusions are the main ways of using plants by residents.

The leaves, the branches, and the fruits are the most commonly used parts. Almost 18% of the flora is used for wood and construction purposes.

Several uses such as cosmetic, shampoo, firming skin tonics and health hair products recorded in Rayones has not been reported for other areas in the state of Nuevo Leon. In Rayones, women have a greater knowledge about plants and their uses than men, particularly, medicinal plants, but, men have a greater knowledge about wood and construction species.

Source: Ethnobotany in Rayones, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

Source: Fotos de Rayones, Nuevo León

Golden Horseshoe has algae problems of its own

By: Patty Winsa News reporter, Published on Sat Oct 04 2014

The Toledo drinking water crisis was a wake up call for U.S. cities, but many Canadian mayors have known there's a problem with algae at home.

In August, kilometres from the shoreline of Toledo, Ohio, a blue-green algal slime slips into an intake pipe and releases a toxin that contaminates the water.

With no regulatory guidance or national standard to look to, Mayor Michael Collins makes the decision to shut off the drinking supply to 400,000 people, prompting a run on bottled water and a call to the National Guard.

In the wake of the crisis, Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emanuel calls a Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative summit in Chicago. Mayors and representatives from 23 U.S. and Canadian cities, as well as the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), attend.

But no one from Toronto goes.

The city hasn’t been part of the initiative since former mayor David Miller served as its chair.

And environmental issues have been on the back burner for Mayor Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard) who, along with a third of council, received an “F” last term from the Toronto Environmental Alliance.

But for the U.S., and for many Canadian mayors, the August event in Toledo was “a real crisis,” says David Ullrich, executive director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative in Chicago.

The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence account for 20 per cent of fresh surface water in the world.

“That was the driving force and the focus of the summit: what are the things we can do in the near term to protect ourselves in the future?” says Ullrich of the meeting, which was held last week. “And to see what we can do on other problems as well.”

Ullrich told the Star he hadn’t heard from any of Toronto’s mayoral candidates regarding the summit.

Lake Erie has been under attack from massive blue-green algae blooms, which feed off the plant nutrient phosphorus from farm and waste water run-off and release the toxin microcystin.

The EPA pledged $12 million for extra monitoring at the summit and announced a Great Lakes action plan which includes additional funding to deal with algae problem. The agency also agreed to work with cities to create microcystin benchmarks.

Toronto’s water supply has never been compromised in the same way, but public health advisories on the toxic effects of blue-green algae, which can kill dogs and cause liver problems, diarrhea and skin rashes in humans, were recently issued for swimmers in Hamilton Harbour.

And to the east, the town of Ajax is struggling with a monumental outbreak of foul-smelling algae that is washing up thigh-deep on the city’s waterfront and could just as easily develop here.

“They’ve spent millions of dollars to have one of the most beautiful and accessible waterfronts in the GTA,” says Martin Auer, a scientist who specializes in surface water quality engineering, “and they literally can’t use it in the summer because of the algae that washes up on the beaches and rots and creates horrible odours of decomposition of plant material.”

The nuisance algae, called Cladophora, are a species native to the Great Lakes.

Cladophora doesn’t release a toxin but the plant, which grows at the bottom of the lake on rocks, cobblestones, solid bedrock and even zebra mussel beds, can destroy fish habitats and cause avian botulism.

Auer says it is responsible for the death of water fowl in Lake Michigan, including loons.

That “kind of breaks our heart because those loons are up in the north of Canada breeding and then they come down through and they pick up the botulism and they die on the way south,” says Auer.

When the algae wash up on shore, residents say the stench is overwhelming.

“We’re at the point now where literally metric tons of it are washing up on the beaches of Ajax,” notes Auer.

At fault, says Auer, who was hired by the town of Ajax, is the soluble phosphorus in the effluent from the Duffins Creek Water Pollution Control Plant in nearby Pickering.

The plant processes waste water for York and Durham regions and wants to increase its output from 360 million litres to 560 litres a day to accommodate York Region’s expansion plans.

An environmental assessment closed this week, but the town is asking the minister of the environment for an extension to consider Auer’s research, which will be ready by the end of the year.

The region says it is not at fault and points to a 2009 University of Waterloo study that says the phosphorus from Duffins Creek has “a relatively small influence on the conditions for Cladophora growth.”

Ajax, which spent a “considerable amount of tax payer’s money” to hire Auer, disagrees.

“This is a growing problem, that as this research comes to the forefront, the light’s going to be coming on and more and more people are going to get involved,” says Paul Allore, the town’s director of planning and development. “Just like after what happened in Toledo.”

Phosphorus levels are down in the open water of Lake Ontario as a whole and have been dropping for years, and the Durham plant is meeting its standards.

But Auer argues those limits need to be lowered to reflect what’s happening in the near shore.

“On the way to being mixed throughout the lake, it passes directly through the places algae grow,” he says. “And it’s not diluted. So it puts very high levels of phosphorus into the near shore Cladophora garden, and that’s what creates the problem.”

Zebra mussels have made the problem worse. The invasive species filters the water and makes it clearer so that light can penetrate to a 10-metre depth, which contributes to the algae’s growth.

“The problems in Lake Ontario today are limited to local areas where treatment plants discharge,” says Auer. “But there are 18 wastewater treatment plants discharging into Lake Ontario near shore in the Golden Horseshoe.

“If you realize that 6 kilometres to the west there is another treatment plant, and 6 kilometres to the west of that there’s another, and 6 kilometres there’s another,” says Auer, “and all the way around to St. Catharines what you’re doing is creating a bathtub ring of very high phosphorus around an open lake core of very clean water.”

Because the algae harbour bacteria, fecal matter from sewage mixed in with it can survive longer than if it were in open water exposed to light.

The algae are common in the Humber River area, says Auer, and Toronto can expect more.

“It’s all over the place from St. Catharines to Oshawa. It’s just a question of where you happen to be relative to where the wind blows.”

The problem of nutrient overload in the Great Lakes is something that all mayors around the great lakes should be aware of, says Steve Parish, mayor of Ajax.

“When you look at it, our issue in one sense is a small little thing,” he says. “But then you add Toledo and you add the Chicago meeting and you add the places like us around the Great Lakes that have similar problems. And if they’re not protected, if we don’t deal with this nutrient problem, it’s a threat not just to tourism and recreation but our economy.

It’s a point that Peter Ketchum, reeve of the Township of the Archipelago in Georgian Bay, agrees with.

Cottage owners in Sturgeon Bay, off Georgian Bay, who have tried to sell their properties have been unable to do so because of toxic blue-green algae that have developed naturally.

Ketchum, who attended the Toledo summit, has spent 10 years studying the problem and says cottagers are considering paying $1 million for treatment to get rid of the toxic algae.

“It’s a big issue to us,” he says. “It’s a big issue to the ratepayers.”

Cladophora covers the shore at at Paradise Park in Ajax in September. The town park has beaches, sports fields and tennis courts.

Source: Golden Horseshoe has algae problems of its own