Naturalist Newsletter: Oct 3/ Army Ants & Honeybees

[Rob]

JIM CONRAD’S NATURALIST NEWSLETTER
Issued from Hacienda Chichén beside the Maya ruin of
Chichén Itzá in the central Yucatán, MÉXICO

October 3, 2010

*****

ARMY ANT VIDEO, & HONEYBEES
All week a battalion of army ants has circulated in
the area and it hasn't been easy on my ankles. Usually
I don't realize I've wandered into their seething
black currents moving across the ground until they've
started biting, and then they hold on until they're
picked off. We've met army ants here often enough, so
you can see pictures of them and read about them at
http://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/armyant.htm

What's new this time is that I remembered that my
dandy little digital camera has video capabilities, so
this week I filmed a battalion as it streamed across a
portion of ground. Theoretically you can see that at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4-QEvtG81I

Luis, who produces the milpa or traditional cornfield,
told me what he watched some, too. A broad wave of
them crossed his milpa one morning, climbed two or
three big Piich trees and found nothing, but then high
up another Piich they found a cavity holding a colony
of Africanized Bees -- "Killer Bees," as the media
call them. The ants immediately set about cutting the
bees to pieces.

"They'd walk up to a bee and with their big jaws cut
it right across its midsection," he said, shaking his
head as if he couldn't believe it. "The bees' parts
fell to the ground where other ants were waiting to
carry them away. Beneath the tree it was like a dry
rain falling, but it was pieces of honeybees. Those
ants wiped out the whole colony, then ate the honey,
left, and didn't come back."

*****

VISITOR INSIDE THE MOSQUITO NET
Tuesday night, not long after dozing off a couple of
hours after sundown, I was awakened inside the
mosquito net by puffs of air, now on my cheek, now my
arm, now my foot. One summer night back when I was
hermitting in the south-Mississippi woods I'd awakened
to the same thing, and that had turned out to be a bat
inside my net. In fact, once I got my little penlight
shining I found a brownish, oval lump the size of an
egg clinging to the inside of the mosquito net's
walls. I got my camera, took a picture, removed the
critter, and went back to sleep, wondering how bats
get inside my mosquito net.

The next day, what a surprise to see the picture once
it was on my laptop's screen. You can see it also at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003ck.jpg

Not a bat. With spiny legs like that and such long,
slender antennae above, it had to be an insect. And
with a rounded "hood" -- the pronotum -- covering its
head like that, it had to be a cockroach.

But where were its wings, and why was the lower half
of its body segmented not at all like a cockroach's,
and what was all that white stuff covering its body?

It took me awhile to figure out that it lacked wings
and the lower half of its body, or abdomen, was
segmented because this is an immature stage on which
the wings haven't yet developed, and all cockroach
abdomens are segmented, just that on adults the wings
cover the abdomen so you can't see the segments.

Also I figure the body is white and flaky because this
immature, late-instar stage is about to molt, so the
old exterior skeleton, or exoskeleton, is pulling away
from the new exoskeleton forming below it -- which
when the old one is shed will expand and show bright
colors. Where air enters between the old and new
exoskeletons, a pale interstice forms.

I'm guessing that this is the True Death's Head
Cockroach, BLABERUS CRANIIFER, the striking adult of
which we've already seen and dedicated a page to at
http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/deadhead.htm

But, This wingless immature cockroach can't fly, so
what about the puffs of air that had awakened me? I'm
guessing that the puffs were indeed caused by a bat,
just one outside the tent instead of inside, maybe
trying to get at the cockroach the bat's sonar
detected on the net.

Just as when that bat back in Mississippi really did
get inside the net, it all seems pretty unusual --
except to my Maya friends. To them it's just the kind
of thing those mischievous, gnomelike Aluxob would do,
especially since we've not yet gotten around to
dedicating the hut properly, with prayers and
offerings of atole at the hut's four sides.

*****

MEXICAN ELDER
As I biked down a backstreet in Pisté a familiar form
greeted me from across the six-ft concrete wall shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003sm.jpg

Anyone halfway familiar with the flora of North
America or Europe will recognize this robust woody
bush with basketball-size, flattish to round-topped,
heads of small, white flowers, and similar-sized
drooping clusters of blackish, pea-sized fruits, and
pinnately compound, opposite leaves, as a kind of
elder, or genus Sambucus, of the Honeysuckle Family,
the Caprifoliaceae. A closer view of both a flowering
head and a fruiting head is shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003sn.jpg

However, the species in the picture is clearly
different from any of the common elder species of both
North America and Europe. For one thing, it's larger
than the American species. Also, several of the other
species produce red fruits instead of black, and of
the black-fruited species the fruits of some are
coated with a silvery sheen, or glaucousness, while
our fruits are plain black. Also, this species' leaves
are sometimes twice compound -- something seen in few
other elder species -- as shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003so.jpg

At this point I'm supposed to reveal the name, but
that's tricky because the taxonomy of the genus
Sambucus is a real mess. A year ago in Oregon's
Siskiyou Mountains we looked at western North
America's Blue Elderberry. Of that species' technical
name I wrote, "California's Jepson Manual calls it
Sambucus mexicana but the USDA lists it as Sambucus
nigra ssp. cerulea, and Wikipedia's expert claims that
it's Sambucus cerulea."

So you see that "Sambucus mexicana" is the name the
well respected Jepson Manual calls the Californian
species. But "SAMBUCUS MEXICANA" is the very name most
often used for our present elder bush, though it's
clearly a different species. For one thing, different
from ours, the California species' black fruits are
coated with silvery glaucescence, as shown on their
page at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/w/blue-eld.htm

So, until an expert comes along telling us what's
right, I'm calling our California Blue Elder Sambucus
cerulea, and our Pisté garden species Sambucus
mexicana, the Mexican Elder.

Sambucus mexicana is native to the Mexican uplands,
where its Spanish name is Sauco, but not to the
Yucatan. Here it's strictly planted as a garden
species. Its fruits are edible.

*****

WILD JÍCAMA
Along the weedy roadside south of Pisté I came upon
numerous foot-high racemes of bluish-white flowers
emerging from a sprawling mass of leafy vines, as seen
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003ji.jpg

The blossoms were fairly distinctive, clearly being
"papilionaceous" flowers, or "butterfly-like" flowers
of the Bean Family, with ¾-inch long (20 mm) petals
all about the same length, and brown, fleshy calyxes.
A side view showing the bluish-based wings is at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003jj.jpg

A view from above showing the flowers' very broad top
petals, or standards, subtended by two yellowish calyx
lobes fused to form single, broad, notched lobes is at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003jk.jpg

I felt like I'd seen such flowers before but certainly
the vines' trifoliate leaves with very deeply lobed
leaflets didn't ring a bell at all. They're seen at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101003jl.jpg

I had to key out the flowers before I realized that
this was none other than the Jícama, PACHYRRHIZUS
EROSUS, sometimes called Yam Bean, growing right now
in the Hacienda's milpa, or traditional cornfield. Its
vines, which can reach 30 feet long (9 m) arise from
foot-thick (30 cm), starchy tubers that are famously
edible and important to the Maya and many other
cultures across the world's tropics. But the Jícama
leaves I'm used to don't have such deeply lobed
leaflets.

Jícama is native to Mexico, so I wasn't too surprised
to find it growing wild here. However, the Maya name
"Chicam" is reckoned to be a corruption of the Nahuatl
name "Jicama," suggesting the theory that the plant
was introduced to the Yucatán's Maya by upland Mexican
people, Nahuatl being the language of the Aztecs who
formerly occupied the area of Mexico City.

All above-ground parts of Jícama, including flowers,
pods and seeds, contain rotenone, a chemical much used
as an organic insecticide.

In the much outdated and incomplete Flora of the
Yucatan, Paul Standley designates such Jícamas as ours
with deeply lobed leaflets as Pachyrhizus
palmatilobus, but it seems that later authors lumped
this variation with the more cosmopolitan P. erosus.

*****

NEW ATOLE & RAIN-PROVOKING WOMAN
Today, Sunday, I have two invitations to visit the
homes of Maya friends who are celebrating their "Day
of The New Atole." Atole (ah-TOH-leh) is a cherished,
traditional, indigenous, corn-based drink found all
across Mexico, drunk on many occasions. Sometimes it's
sweetened and flavored so that it's really delicious,
and pretty caloric.

What's special about today is that fresh sweetcorn is
available to make it from. In fact, the Day of New
Atole isn't a fixed date. The celebration takes place
when a family's milpa, or traditional cornfield,
begins producing sweetcorn.

"This is one of the most anticipated days of the
year," my friend Bibiano tells me. "Everyone has just
been waiting, so now we'll pick the very sweetest,
most tender ears of corn, then cut off grind the
kernels to form the moist paste called masa. We'll
knead the masa real well, then dissolve it while
mixing in water until it forms a smooth emulsion. Then
we'll cook it until it's just perfect."

The ceremony of the New Atole varies from family to
family. Normally the New Atole is so sweet naturally
and tastes so good that nothing is added. It's just
sweetcorn and water. Often there's no ceremony
associated with it, but Luis of the milpa tells me
what his family is doing today:

"When the atole is ready we'll fill 13 jícaras
(traditional bowls made from round, gourdlike fruits
of the Calabash Tree) and carry them to the milpa,
where we'll evenly place the jícaras all around.
Beside each jícara we'll leave two of the largest,
most perfect ears from the milpa. You'll have a jícara
then two ears, another jícara and two ears, and so
forth. We'll wait may half an hour so the Alux can
feast, and then we ourselves will drink the New Atole,
and eat the sweetcorn."

People think of this celebration as marking the moment
of the year when afternoon rains slowly begin petering
out, the air becomes drier, and overall it starts
growing cooler. The rainy season begins to end as the
dry season begins to begin. In fact, right on cue,
most of this week has been dry, and one morning it was
so cool that I had to put on a sweatshirt. It was 72°
F (22° C).

Even up north the first coolish days of late summer
always put me in a certain mood. With cooler, drier
weather, suddenly it feels as if I've been half asleep
or maybe drugged during all that hot, muggy weather --
getting my work done, but kind of dead-headed and
spiritless.

For example, a friend lent me a novel by Alice Walker
in which someone said, "She was the kind of woman to
provoke rain."

The idea delighted me and I laughed over it a lot.
When it had been so hot and muggy, I doubt I'd have
noticed such a pleasing turn of words.

But, now that things are loosening up, not only did
the words tickle me but also I've been wondering how
I've been around all these decades, in so many
countries and cultures, and even still in my life
there's no woman who'd provoke rain.

Of course, I'd assumed that any woman who could bring
on rain would be a joy to be with, a force of Nature
to behold, and a tiger to love. But then maybe the
writer meant that she was just so depressing that the
sky clouded over wherever she went.

Whatever was meant, even wondering what kind of woman
would provoke rain has been a pleasure this week,
after this long season of heat and mud. And what a
shame that up North we have no celebration like that
of the New Atole with which to inaugurate this subtle
but profound shift of events and perceptions occurring
all around us right now, and that nowadays so few
women can provoke rain.

*****

PLATO AND THIS NEWSLETTER
Regularly during my life, usually around my birthday,
I've done this: Ask myself WHY I'm doing what I'm
doing, and whether what I'm doing fits the idea I have
of myself. Sometimes the exercise provides the kick I
need to stop doing something that may feel good in the
short term but produces disagreeable long-term effects
-- like eating too much. Other times it reminds me
that some of the things I may dislike doing, in the
end, provide good long-term results, so I need to keep
doing them but quit feeling sorry for myself -- like
jogging every morning.

I spend a lot of time on the Newsletter, so this week
I reflected on why I do that. After thinking about it
awhile I've reaffirmed to myself that producing it
fits perfectly into my overall world view. It's fun to
do and others seem to enjoy it as well, but to me the
most important reason is that somehow I feel that
publishing the Newsletter, by encouraging me to keep
paying attention to Nature week after week, helps me
advance spiritually. And maybe it helps others, too.

For, I'm convinced that Nature as a model reveals to
us all the strategies we need for living happy,
healthy, creative and sustainable lives. It offers
deeply flowing currents of inspiration and love that
we can tap into just by recognizing them, and
harmonizing our own lives with them. To the extent
that the Newsletter encourages us in this process, it
helps us advance spiritually.

Plato says it with more elegant words. In his Phaedrus
he describes the path to the "heaven which is above
the heavens" where there abides "... the colorless,
formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind,
the pilot of the soul." I believe that the path he is
talking about is the same path we tread when we
consciously seek to know and experience Nature in all
Her dimensions. Plato further writes:

"The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and
pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul
which is capable of receiving the food proper to it,
rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing
upon truth, is replenished and made glad... "

I do believe that Plato in some teeny, secret way was
referring to our little Newsletter.

*****

Best wishes to all Newsletter Readers.

Jim

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