Cacao species and regional variants for Maya chocolate in Guatemala

Posted June 8, 2022 by Nicholas Hellmuth

We continue to find regional variants of Mayan cacao. We will return with a 3-meter tall ladder so we can photograph each Theobroma species and each variant of Theobroma cacao up in the trees. We will bring portable studio lighting and a photography team.

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Not all these pods are Theobroma cacao! Estimate how many are Theobroma cacao and which are other species? More to come: we visited a lot of Mayan cacao trees in kitchen gardens around Mayan houses; lots more than just "chocolate trees."

Not all these pods are Theobroma cacao! Estimate how many are Theobroma cacao and which are other species? More to come: we visited a lot of Mayan cacao trees in kitchen gardens around Mayan houses; lots more than just "chocolate trees."

Spanish interview at El Búho with Dr Nicholas Hellmuth

Posted June 6, 2022

FLAAR Mesoamerica Founder, Dr Nicholas Hellmuth was invited by El Búho and Canal Más TV to speak about his many years of experience in Guatemala and how he created FLAAR Mesoamérica and MayanToons and about more of what we do. Here you can watch the entire interview held in Spanish.

Edible vanilla orchids grows wild throughout the Maya Lowlands and Maya Highlands

Posted May 19, 2022

Veracruz is the best known area for mass production of vanilla. Did the Totonac spread vanilla production over a thousand years ago? But the Olmecs were also in Veracruz plus Tabasco. Adjacent to the Classic Maya ruins of Comalcalco (Tabasco) is a cacao orchard with vanilla growing up and down the shade trees. So was the route Veracruz-Tabasco-Peten?

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Whoa, there are several species of wild vanilla orchid vines in Peten, Belize (and in Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, etc.). In May 2022 we found wild Vanilla insignis vines flowering in two different bajo areas of Peten (Los Pescaditos-La Gloria which is west of Uaxactun; and along the road from Yaxha to Nakum). We will have two FLAAR Reports ready during June to show the vanilla vines and to discuss all the wild vanilla plants that the Maya had. So no need for Veracruz or Tabasco to have introduced this (though processing technology information could have been shared).

Flavoring chocolate (foods and drinks from Theobroma cacao) is the best known use of vanilla but vanilla has many more uses past, present, and future. I am curious why no vanilla flowers or vanilla beans have been featured in palace scenes.

It helps to stay at the Ecolodge El Sombrero to accomplish field work to find and photograph wild orchids in flower. Be sure to have a licensed registered Peten area guide with you and high-axel 4WD for the road from Yaxha to Nakum. No SUV can survive the deep ruts. You can rent a vehicle and driver from the hotel.

Lots of edible seed pods from Gonolobus vines of PNYNN

Posted March 21, 2022

Gonolobus is a vine we are interested in because parts of some species are eaten, especially in Peten and adjacent Alta Verapaz. Best before it is totally ripe; you eat as if it were guisquil asado (Teco, personal communication, 2022).

The photos by park ranger Teco (Moises Daniel Perez Diaz) are in Parque Nacional Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo (PNYNN), near the border of Yaxha-Nakum area and adjacent Parque Nacional Tikal (PNAT). North of Yaxha, but closer to Nakum, en route from El Tigre. After El Tigre (forest consession of Arbol Verde), (CONAP) campamento La Perra.

El Tigre is where you can climb the pyramid and to see Temple IV on the horizon. Comparable view from climbing the main temple pyramid of El Zotz: from there you can see Tikal on the horizon from a different angle.

There are several species of Gonolobus vines native to different parts of Peten. Two species we raise in our FLAAR. Here are photos of seed pods of one of these vines in our garden (today, 21 March, 2022). They are not yet mature; a few weeks more and they will pop open and the seeds will fluff out on kapok-like cotton parachutes (like Ceiba kapok).

We show additional photographs on our www.Maya-ethnobotany.org web site.

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Achievements:
Livingston Biodiversity Documentation

Posted March 16, 2022

Join us in our "Livingston Biodiversity Documentation" to learn about our achievements and experiences during our field trips.

This presentation will be in Spanish starting 6 PM on Thursday, 17 March.

Lots more to “Yaxha” than just Lake Yaxha:
there is a whole series of other small lagoons to the west

Posted October 15, 2021

In past decades archaeologists, geologists, soil scientists, pollen core specialists and ecologists have nicely studied many areas of Parque Nacional Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo. Our goal for the 5-year project of cooperation and coordination with CONAP is to continue to find, document, photograph, and publish the photos of the flora, fauna and biodiverse ecosystems of the Reserva de la Biosfera where other scholars have not yet visited or if visited did not do high-resolution digital photography. This way we can suggest to other professors and students, where their own future projects could be productive.

It’s a lot easier as a professor or student in the era of COVID 19 work-from-home to plan your future field work in the comfort of your home if lots of fresh documentation is available in advance from our FLAAR reports.

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This first 16 pages is just an introduction. We have longer reports in preparation for each laguneta west of Lake Yaxha and the inlet at the southwest side of Lake Yaxha. But we wanted to start with showing how 90% of printed maps and Google maps on the Internet don’t show any name for the Laguneta La Guitarra (also named Laguneta El Juleque in Plan Maestra reports of the PNYNN). And we point out the confusion of names: Juleque for the lagoon over the other side of the hill; and Julequito for an inlet on the east side of the hill; an inlet of Lake Yaxha so not really a separate lagoon.

It would be great if soil scientists, geologists, botanists and geographical specialists could consider the several relatively pristine lagoons west and northwest of Lake Yaxha. And would be remarkable to have core samples collected from the Laguneta of 3 Conjoined Cenotes; all of us were amazed and astonished to see how many biodiverse ecosystems exist in this previously unpublished part of PNYNN.

How did the Preclassic and Classic Maya use the savannas of the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya?

Posted October 5, 2021

Every month we are finding more open grassland savannas. We are focusing on the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya: northern half of Peten: from Chiapas-Peten border across Guatemala to the Peten-Belize border. And from Lake Peten Itza up north to the Peten-Campeche border.

We focus on this area since the savannas of southern Peten (around Poptun have lots of pine and karst dome (small hills) in the middle of most of the savannas). And the savannas from south of Lake Peten to the west around La Libertad towards Sayaxche are mostly destroyed (and were studied in the 1930’s by ethnobotanist Cyrus Lundell). Plus these savannas are different than the ones in the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya (RBM, which, so far, lack pine and lack Curatella americana, sandpaper leaf trees).

Were savannas burned annually for thousands of years? The tasiste, nance, and jicarra trees have evolved to be adapted to survive these fires.

Were the savanna areas of the RBM ever “forested” or were they always grasslands surrounded by bajo forest and sometimes hilltop forests at their edges?

Were any or many of these savannas or cibal sawgrass grasslands modified by the Maya (the way the Aguada Maya was totally modified, in Parque Nacional Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo)?

And why do most of the savannas and cibal-savannas have a ring of stagnant water around their edges (in the transition zone between the open savanna and the closed bajo forest or hillside forest surrounding the open grasslands)?

Wetlands ecosystems of the rivers, lakes, and Caribbean Coast

Posted April 20, 2021

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This presentation will be in Spanish starting 10 am this Saturday, 24 April.

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Though obviously nothing is there until Saturday morning. If you wish to be on our mailing list, please write us FrontDesk at FLAAR.org

How many trees of Guatemala have latex which is called lechemiel (Honey Milk)?

Posted March 25, 2021

To get here is a long uphill hike; then steep downhill, in the mountains overlooking the west end of Canyon Rio Dulce. We are standing in front of what we estimate may be a young lechemiel tree whose latex is called honey milk. This is for our project segment to find all wild native trees of Guatemala that can produce "drinkable" latex (for the Classic Maya thousands of years ago).-.

We all have face masks but when hiking long distances, especially up steep hills, it's not realistic to breathe through a mask.

The team consists of local Garifuna assistants, local Q'eqchi' Mayan assistants plus the university students working with FLAAR Mesoamerica. Photo was taken by Maria Alejandra Gutierrez, so she is not in the photo.

As you can tell from the surroundings (Heliconia front and right) we are in a very humid area. It rains more in the Caribbean Municipio de Livingston area of Izabal than in most other areas of Guatemala.

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Here is a typical steep hill. One of the team literally wore out after the first kilometer and we politely suggested he return to the base camp to recuperate. If he had been wearing a mask he would never had made it. But obviously we all have face masks and when near any village we put on masks when in a vehicle or boat.