A useful lovely

Wandering the beach road a couple of days ago, I noticed this lovely thing in bloom.

 There is a lot of it here, and it makes quite an impressive showing along the dunes

in addition to being popular with pollinating insects.

While most insects would not cooperate by holding still long enough to be photographed, these seaside shrubs were attracting a fair number of skippers, the first of these little butterflies I have noticed here in Progreso. And while I was unable to get a closeup of bee fannies on this particular species, I did see what appeared to be the stingless Melipona bees of the Yucatan on nearby vegetation.

Obviously, a plant that can grow in pure sand, tolerate salt spray, and support insect life has a lot going for it, so obviously I had to find out what it was.

This lovely shrub is Suriana maritima, or bay cedar, known to the Maya as Pats'il. Common on this stretch of beach, it is listed as an endangered species in Florida, where unwise development has eliminated much of its coastal dune habitat. Fortunately, there is enough of it in the rest of its range that the IUCN lists it as a species of least concern.

It should come as no surprise that the inhabitants of this peninsula found ways to make use of a common plant that grows well without human interference. The wood of mature Pats'il is dense and heavy and was once commonly harvested for small items. The plant also found its way into traditional medicine as a poultice to treat infection and internally to cure dysentery. Research into its properties is ongoing at CICY, the Centro de Investigacion Cientifica de Yucatan, where contemporary scientists work with traditional healers to isolate the compounds that cure diseases and make them available to modern medicine.

Still, I can imagine long-ago groups wandering these seaside thickets to harvest this medicinal plant. (It's as good an excuse for a beach walk as any.)

This morning's discovery

 On this morning's beach walk, my companions and I came across this creature, deposited on the shore by a strong incoming tide.

    The orifice on the left side of its body in the photo above was opening and closing, so it was presumably still alive. A tender-hearted companion hoped to rescue the creature, but not knowing what it was, and some gelatinous masses of marine invertebrate being venomous, we were not about to touch it.  Eventually, she was able to move the mystery organism with her flip-flop, but every time it was successfully moved into the water, a wave brought it back onto the sand, and we finally gave up and left it to its fate (which on this stretch of the Yucatan coast probably involves being eaten by gulls).

    A Google search identified the unfortunate creature as some type of sea cucumber, possibly Thyone mexicana, the Mexican sea cucumber, though it was not in the best of health, several Gulf species look basically alike to me, and we did not measure it or check out the tube feet it supposedly has. For those unfamiliar with these creatures, they inhabit the floors of shallow seas and feed on whatever debris comes their way. Some do indeed have venomous defenses, so we were wise not to touch this unfamiliar being.

    Disgusting as sea cucumbers look (at least by human aesthetic standards), they have a number of predators, including crabs, fish, turtles, and the aforementioned gulls (when they find their way above water. What I had not known is that some species are being hunted almost to extinction because humans in many places (mostly China and South Asia, though the market is expanding) have developed a taste for sea cucumber flesh. A shocking-to-me statistic: dried sea cucumber meat is selling on the black market for over $200 a pound, and poachers have been known to attack legitimate fishing boats in waters off the Yucatan peninsula. 

    Having encountered the creature in the wild, and even without knowing the horrors involved in its harvesting, I have no desire to order it should I encounter it on a menu.

    Let's leave it for the sharks and sea turtles.

Sources for further reading:

How a Seafloor Blob Became Mexico's "Black Gold"

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sea-cucumbers-mexico

A “Sea Cucumber Mafia” operates along the Yucatecan coast

    

Something I Did Not Expect to See

     Wandering the beach road shortly before sunset, I was drawn to a white blossom down at ground level. At first, I thought it was some sort of datura, but the characteristic overwhelming scent was not there, and the habit was wrong. This little beauty was a vine, intertwined with other tough plants digging their roots into wind-blown sand.

It did not occur to me that I was looking at a plant that has always defeated me when I try to grow it: Ipomoea alba, often called moon flower in the US. Yet another supposedly foolproof plant that has always refused to grow in my yard but was here doing quite well in an area that defeats most vegetation, salt and low fertility not generally being good things in the angiosperm world. 

    Moon flower is a close cousin of morning glory, but, as the name suggests, it blooms at night. Or is supposed to: this specimen was in full flower before sunset, yet another reminder that plants sometimes have minds of their own.

    My search for the mystery flower's identity led to something else I had not known: moonflower has been cultivated for many centuries in what today is Mexico. In more inland areas, it often grows in the company of rubber trees, and the Mayans and Olmecs used its sap to vulcanize natural latex into the first rubber. Not being in the habit of using wheels, as this part of the world lacked any animals useful for pulling carts, these earlier Mexicans used rubber to make the balls used in the sacred game of pok ta' pok. Courts where this ritual game was played are found at many of the temple sites found through Mesoamerica.

    I never expected to find a plant essential to ancient chemistry and ceremony on the path a few blocks from my apartment. 

Learning New Things All the Time

 One of the attractions of the western edge of Progreso is its healthy dune system, home to native plants adapted to salt and wind and capable of holding soil in this difficult environment. 

In this, it is very different from eastern Chixculub, subject of a 2018 blog post critical of what I thought represented poor siting choices. In some places, houses are barely above the high tide line and facing serious erosion.

    What I learned this week is that the beaches of Chixculub were not being lost to the Gulf at the time most of the houses were built. Instead, much of the erosion on that section of this spit of land resulted from the construction of the Progreso Pier, which extends some four miles into the Gulf of Mexico. This extensive human construction has changed water movement and sand deposition patterns.

    It is unquestionable that the world's longest pier has been an economic boon to this area. Inshore waters here are shallow, too shallow for large boats. At low tide, I have seen people walking in water barely above their knees a hundred feet from shore. Because the pier extends so far into the Gulf, massive cargo ships now unload in Progreso's harbor, along with every drop of gasoline consumed in the state of Yucatan. (Fossil fuels create their own problems, but electric car infrastructure does not yet exist here to any great degree.) Cruise ships can now dock in Progreso, bringing thousands of visitors (and the money they spend) to the downtown area and nearby attractions every month. Local entrepreneurs have created small businesses to serve all these visitors, the city has used the tax dollars to upgrade services used by locals and tourists alike, and the presence of so many restaurants, shops, and interesting people has led some of us to spend months at a time here. And of course there are the beaches themselves.

There's a lot to be said for miles of this as an escape from some of the craziness of the world.

    But as with most things designed by humans, there was a price to be paid. This area west of the world's longest pier has benefited, but the dunes in a long stretch west of town are long gone. 

    I wonder how long it will be before some unfortunate folks' beach houses vanish as well.

The best-laid plans. . .

    I really did intend to do useful things this winter--more blogging, finish a project for a church committee, more research on pollinators--and I almost certainly will do those things, but my first two weeks in Yucatan have found me doing a lot of more or less nothing. Given that this is the view from my apartment, the reasons for that nothing are probably obvious.

There is the beach road to walk, not to mention the malecon if I want to see humans, and the neighborhood tiendas to visit. (It may not be A Good Thing that a panaderia with pay de queso and brownies is only two blocks away, though there is also a tiny fruteria.) There are squadrons of pelicans flying overhead at sunrise (which is generally gorgeous, and visible from the rear terrace), occasional frigate birds drifting by, grackles and hummingbirds in the palms, and sunset off the front terrace. There are passionflowers blooming along the path,

along with morning glories if I drag myself out early enough.

Alice Walker's fictional philosopher Shug Avery noted that the universe is always trying to please humans by creating bits of beauty. In her words, "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." We certainly wouldn't want that, would we?

    The project will get finished. But probably not this morning. 

New Year in a New Place

     Almost two years after leaving as the pandemic began, I am back in Progreso for the winter--at least, unless some hideous new variant arises and travelers are called home again, or Mexico decides to throw all the snowbirds out. And honestly, I would not blame them. Cases are up 600% in the last two weeks (coinciding with the arrival of massive numbers of winter refugees from the US and Canada), though some of that increase may be due to holiday gatherings, when I suspect most people did not socially distance. Despite the spike, the infection rate here is less than one-tenth that of my rural Ohio county. The likely reasons for that are a whole 'nother subject.

    This time I am trying a different neighborhood, about five miles west of the elegant beach house rented with friends the first two years. Most of the homes there had been built by well-to-do residents of nearby Merida, who use them only in the summer and rent them out in the winter to clueless gringos who do not realize that no one swims in the Gulf before Easter (shades of my Florida girlhood). This is an ordinary neighborhood of mostly year-round residents, though some enterprising souls (like the delightful young couple from whom I am renting) have created accessory dwelling units to bring in extra income. Not elegant, but centrally located for exploring places I have never been.

The lure of this particular apartment, however, is its exact location.  At the end of our short side street, a right turn leads to the International Malecon, a paved biking/jogging trail that meanders along the dunes, now being revegetated, to downtown Progreso and ends at a favorite beach club. (Once in a while one wishes to sit under a palapa and have nice people bring fruity drinks.), A left turn leads along the calle playa, a sand road that eventually narrows to a path leading to a sea turtle nesting area and eventually, the city marina and yacht club. 

While both are useful, anyone who knows me can probably imagine which I prefer for non-utilitarian purposes.

My plan for this winter is to explore different neighborhoods, but for now, a picture of some of the neighbors, out and about on New Year's morning.

Stay tuned for further adventures.