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.)