Naturalist Newsletter: Oct 10/ Sulphur on The Highway

[Rob]

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

October 10, 2010

*****

SULPHUR ON THE HIGHWAY
On the peaceful little blacktop road running south of
Pisté, from the bike I spotted a yellow butterfly
lying at the road's edge. He'd been hit by a car,
leaving his wings cramped unnaturally below him. I
knelt and gently spread the wings atop the road
surface. You can see the pretty orange markings there
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010yb.jpg

Bea in Ontario tells me that this is an Orange-barred
Sulphur, PHOEBIS PHILEA, a member of the big Whites &
Sulphurs Family of butterflies, the Pieridae. It's a
common species, frequent along weedy roadsides, and
I've seen it a lot. I hadn't photographed one until
now because they're swift, high fliers. When it's hot
and sunny this one just streaks about, not waiting for
a digital camera to do all its grinding and
configuring.

Several look-alike yellow butterfly species are common
here. You might find it interesting to compare a side
shot of this week's Orange-barred Sulphur, shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010yc.jpg with a
similar side shot of an earlier-seen Dina Yellow, at
http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/mariposa/butt061.jpg

If you place those two images in different windows,
side by side on the computer screen, it's fascinating
to see how for the most part they're identical, but
here and there there's a spot on one but not the
other, or a wing vein that's shorter or more bent than
on the other.

One reason Orange-barred Sulphurs are so common is
that there's plenty here for them to eat. Their
caterpillars feed on the genus Cassia in the Bean
Family, and Cassias are common here. Adults take
nectar from many different kinds of flowers. Thus you
find them in all kinds of lowland, weedy sites,
including gardens, parks, forest edges and, as I did,
along roads.

The species is distributed from Brazil all through
Latin America to the US border and southern Florida,
plus it wanders irregularly as far north as Minnesota
and Connecticut. This seems to be a species poised to
take advantage of global warming.

*****

CIP-CHÉ ABLOOM
Nowadays here and there at woods edges you see trees
maybe 15 feet tall (4.5m) just glowing with smallish
yellow flowers. A branch of one is shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010bu.jpg

Closer up you can see the tree's simple, opposite
leaves, and flowers with five "clawed" yellow petals
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010bv.jpg

A close-up of a single flower is at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010bw.jpg

In that picture the five spatula-like petals are easy
enough to identify. From the elevated central area
arise three slender, greenish styles (ovary necks)
bearing stigmatic areas where pollen grains germinate.
Clustered around the three styles are the stamens, the
flat, paddle-shaped things below the brown anthers
being staminodia, or sterile stamens. What's really
interesting is the ring of shiny, oval items -- two
between each pair of petal claws. Those are glands, a
pair of them on each sepal. A view from below a flower
showing the gland-pairs obscuring the sepals is at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010bx.jpg

We've run into oversized sepal glands before, such as
on pink Barbados-Cherry flowers, as shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/09/091122mr.jpg
and yellow Nance, or Golden Spoon, flowers, as seen at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/09/091206ne.jpg

The Barbados-Cherry, the Nance and the roadside tree
we're talking about now all bear those large sepal-
glands because they're in the same big family, the
mostly tropical Malpighia Family, or Malpighiaceae.
Members of the family are woody; no tree or bush well
known to North Americans or Europeans belongs to that
family.

Our roadside tree belongs to the genus BUNCHOSIA.
Probably it's Bunchosia swartziana, though its leaf
bases are more rounded than those shown in the few
pictures of the species on the Internet. It might be
B. lanceolata, which also occurs here, but which so
far doesn't have pictures in cyberspace.

Whatever the species' binomial name, the local Maya,
who call it Cip-Ché, have a high regard for it because
of its miraculous healing powers. When you suffer
"evil winds," a shaman with a handful of branches from
this handsome tree can brush away your miseries. My
shaman friend José explains that it equalizes the
energies, also that there are three kinds of Cip-Ché,
one with flowers, another with fruits, and another
with nothing but leaves.

If this is indeed Bunchosia swartziana, the tree is
distributed from Mexico to Bolivia. In southeastern
Mexico sometimes it's cultivated in home gardens for
its fruits.

*****

"ROOSTER FOOT" VINE
We're entering that time of year when morning-glory
vines start flowering, and I've never seen anyplace in
the world with more morning-glory species than the
Yucatán. We must be at or near the morning-glory
center of evolution.

This week here and there along roadsides a conspicuous
new morning-glory vine has appeared, with large,
completely white flowers with spiraling anthers, and
broad, deeply lobed leaves, with the lobes spreading
like the toes of a chicken's foot. You can see it at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010oo.jpg

In that picture notice the deep pits in the flowers'
throats, where hummingbird or moths with long
proboscises can sup nectar. A close-up showing the
unusual spiraling anthers dusted with white pollen,
with the spherical, fuzzy-looking stigma atop its
long, slender style down at the bottom-left, is at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010op.jpg

In Spanish this vine often is called Pata de Gallo,
which means "Rooster Foot," because of the leaves'
shape. It's OPERCULINA PINNATIFIDA, a species
distributed from southern Texas through lowland Mexico
into Guatemala.

The fruits are as unusual and interesting looking as
the flowers. You can see one subtended by five sepals
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010oq.jpg

The bladdery item divided into four compartments is
the mature ovary wall, or fruit husk. Inside each of
the four cells lies a single large, black, hard seed.

Maximino Martínez's "Las Plantas Medicinales de
México" reports that sometimes hemorrhoid sufferers
carry the black seeds in their pockets to ease their
pain. This is a good example of the Doctrine of
Signatures, which states that medicinal plants may
indicate their use by certain signs. In this case I
suppose that the sign is the swollen bladder, which
somehow is suggestive of what hemorrhoids feel like,
even though they don't necessarily look that way.

*****

SCORPION TAIL FLOWERING
Right outside my hut's door there's a much-branched,
four-ft-tall (1.2m) weed whose flowers are less
interesting than how they're arranged. Take a look at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010he.jpg

Even if you live up North you've probably seen plants
similar to this one because this is one of 250 or so
species of heliotrope, or turnsole. This one's English
name often is given as Scorpion Tail or Butterfly
Heliotrope. It's HELIOTROPIUM ANGIOSPERMUM. You can
see where the name's scorpion part comes from at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010hf.jpg

The curl-tipped inflorescence is suggestive of a
scorpion's arched tail.

In the picture, each of those white-topped items along
the horizontal rachis is a flower. This inflorescence
type, technically referred to as a "scorpioid" raceme,
"scorpioid" meaning "scorpionlike" and a raceme being
a flower spike whose flowers have no stems, or
pedicels. This particular flower head is distinguished
not only by its curled scorpioid tip but also by how
the flowers arise from just one side of the rachis,
generally pointing skyward. The name "heliotrope"
translates to "sun seeker."

Heliotropium angiospermum is distributed from southern
Florida and Texas through the American lowlands to
Brazil; it's a common tropical-American weed. In much
of Mexico a tea made from its brewed leaves is
generally thought of as helping with stomach problems
such as diarrhea, colitis and dysentery.

However, the online "Atlas de las Plantas de la
Medicina Tradicional Mexicana" tells us that none of
the species' purported medicinal values have been
confirmed scientifically. Moreover, there's a report
from Barbados of some boys dying from taking too
strong a tea, plus another study says that when
fourteen rats were injected with an extract from this
plant sarcomas developed in four of the rats at the
injection site. At the very least this herb should be
used with great care.

*****

ORCHID MYSTERY RESOLVED
Orchids are frequently seen here, the vast majority
growing on trees as epiphytes. There's one very common
terrestrial species, however, that for nearly a year
has resisted my efforts to identify it -- until now.
I've even listed every orchid I could find listed for
the Yucatán -- there's quite a number of them -- and
Googled them. Our terrestrial species so common here
simply wasn't on any list. It was a mystery. You can
see a flowering one on a cenote wall near the hut at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010or.jpg

Note its mottled leaves. A close-up of a flower, about
half an inch across (13 mm), is shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010os.jpg

Its characteristically nodding fruits are shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010ou.jpg

Its pseudobulbs -- those water-storage growths at the
bottom of leaves of many orchid genera - are shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010ot.jpg

A peculiarity of the pseudobulbs is that prickly
spines arise from the bulbs' tops. This, along with
its terrestrial mode and mottled leaves, should have
made this orchid very easy to identify, but that
wasn't the case.

Yesterday, in desperation, I tried a very different,
non-technical approach. I Googled the keywords "orchid
chichen itza" and by golly there it was the first
thing! Turns out that an orchid collector had
illegally robbed one from a ruin here at Chichén Itzá,
taken it home, and after months finally was able to
identify it.

It's OECEOCLADES MACULATA, apparently without a
commonly used English name, and the reason it's been
hard to identify is that it's a "weed" introduced from
tropical Africa. Currently it's spreading fast in the
Caribbean area, here and there in Central and South
America, in the Yucatán, and even in the US. It was
discovered in the Miami area in 1974 and is enlarging
its area of distribution fast.

We think of orchids as being extremely fussy about
their ecological requirements, and usually needing
fairly undisturbed habitats. But this is one species
that prefers disturbed places, and occupies many
habitats from rainforests in the Caribbean to various
"old growth" types, to our own somewhat disrupted,
scrubby woods. It roots in various soil types, but --
despite the one in the picture occupying a slope --
strongly prefers level terrain.

So, this has been a hard-won ID, but it's one worth
waiting for. An African weed-orchid not on any list I
can find for this area. You just never know what
you'll blunder into.

*****

POURING BACTERIA INTO TANKS
To keep from contaminating the area's groundwater,
Hacienda Chichen discharges its bathroom and kitchen
effluent into a series of tanks. In the tanks bacteria
decompose organic compounds and filter out inorganic
material. By the time water reaches the bottom of a
nearby sinkhole it's practically pure. Last weekend I
helped one of the owners, Don Bruce (pronounced BROOH-
seh by the employees, though he's a gringo) renew the
tanks' bacterial population. You can see Don Bruce and
our friend Cuba pouring a brew into a tank at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/101010bt.jpg

We tend to grossly underestimate the effect of
microbes on Life on Earth. For example, did you know
that the human body contains 20 times more microbes
than it does cells? A story on National Public Radio
suggested that if a naturalist from Outer Space were
to visit Earth to study humans, the conclusion might
be drawn that human bodies are just mobile homes for
very diverse and sophisticated communities of
microbes. You might enjoy listening to that story at
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5527426

Wikipedia has a page serving as a good introduction to
the whole topic of microbes in human bodies at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flora

But last weekend we were concerned with bacteria not
in human bodies but in the soil, the water, air,
decaying plants and animals, etc. Bacteria are just as
important in every ecological niche as they are in
human bodies.

It happens that Don Bruce sells formulations concocted
to enable bacteria to perform all sorts of jobs
usually thought of as needing powerful chemicals.
There's a "Pet & Wild Animal Odor & Stain Eliminator,"
an "All-In-One Vehicle Interior & Exterior Cleaning
Solution" even an "Aircraft Oil, Exhaust & Carbon
remover & Degreaser," and more. The mix we were using
last weekend was especially for septic tanks. All
these formulations have been certified and approved as
harmless to the environment and humans. You can see a
list of products at the parent office in Canada at
http://www.earthalive.ca/products.php

Maybe this new industry represents an important step
away from society's current over-dependence on
synthetic chemicals. If you're in the Yucatán and
would like more information about possibly buying some
formulations, let me know and I'll pass along your
address to Don Bruce.

*****

WASTING FOOD
On my dandy, daily-updated, Online Nature-News Page at
http://www.backyardnature.net/i-rss.htm I was browsing
articles submitted by ScienceDaily.com. A new study
archived there claimed that the US could save energy
equivalent to about 350,000,000 barrels of oil a year
simply by stopping wasting food -- and that without
spending a penny or diminishing the quality of life.
The study said that in 2007 between 8 and 16% of US
energy consumption went toward food production, but
some 27% of that food was wasted. The story appears at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101003081627.htm

In discussions of this issue one important perspective
I haven't heard anyone expressing is this: NOT wasting
food feels GOOD. I mean, it feels good to live with a
self discipline and to have an ethical foundation with
which such waste simply doesn't arise in the first
place.

The kind of food wasting reported in the article is so
unnatural, so damaging to Life on Earth, and so
without precedence in the natural world, that it
constitutes a perversion. Perverse behaviors arise
from sick spirits.

The interesting thing is that when we harmonize our
thoughts and behaviors with Nature -- and part of that
harmonization must always be to live sustainably -- we
experience a kind of very gratifying resonance, the
intensity of which is all out of proportion to our
everyday feelings. It's similar to how a wet finger
moved along the rim of a glass suddenly causes a
completely unforeseen and inexplicably intense
enchantment of resonating sound.

Consciously not wasting food, and not patronizing
places that do waste food, can be thought of as one of
many daily meditations available to us that can please
and nurture our spirits -- or heal them if our spirits
have been damaged or failed to develop properly.

Many other such behaviors that magically replenish and
make us glad fall under the rubric of "simple living."
Wikipedia provides a surprisingly nice page on that
theme at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living

Sayings worth reflecting on, on the topic of simple
living, are at http://www.gardendigest.com/simple.htm

For example, at the above page there's this by
Mohandas Gandhi, especially fitting when we talk about
wasted food:

"Live simply, so others may simply live."

*****

Best wishes to all Newsletter Readers.

Jim

Subscribe AND unsubscribe to this Newsletter at
http://www.backyardnature.net/news/natnat.php

Post your own backyard-nature observations and pix at
http://groups.google.com/group/backyard-nature/

All previous Newsletters are archived at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/

Visit Jim’s backyard-nature site at
http://www.backyardnature.net