A new favorite place

A tropical garden in an urban setting is a jewel not to be missed, and last week I and the fellow inhabitants of our guesthouse got to tour the Roger Orellana Botanical Garden. This tucked-away treasure, part of a research institute known as CICY, is an oasis for birds and other wildlife in the middle of a very busy city. Alas, a technical problem (a dropped external hard drive that will no longer open on my computer) has trapped most of that day's photos within a currently-useless piece of technology, so this single image of the entry to the gardens will have to do to provide a sense of the place.

Founded in 1983 on the grounds of an old hennequin hacienda, the garden's 2.5 hectares (roughly six acres) include a medicinal plant garden, a native plant nursery, a bird garden, a pollinator habitat, a showcase for Yucatan's twenty species of native palms, and glass houses for desert plants and tropicals from several continents. We were the only human visitors on the day we were there, but the garden was a very busy place.

Besides all the plants busily doing their plant things, the space was full of birds, several dozen species inhabiting this small site. Dragonflies were everywhere in the damp areas and water gardens, and the place was buzzing with bees. The adjoining medicinal and pollinator gardens include a bee house constructed partly of tree trunks, as many of the native bees are cavity nesters. Unlike their cousins to the north, the melipona of Yucatan produce quantities of honey and have been cultivated by the Maya for several thousand years. The bee house contained such incongruous objects as a cigarette and a shot glass, but our guide explained that a local shaman comes each year to bless the bees and make an offering.

CICY's research into the region's medicinal plants is in fact carried out in cooperation with a number of the traditional healers known as shamanes, or shamans. The village healers come to CICY with questions and plants, and the academic researchers use the information provided by local people to attempt to isolate the disease-fighting compounds in the plants used traditionally in the villages. The medicinal garden's plants were labeled with signs indicating the conditions they have been used to treat. Fascinating stuff.

As seems to be typical of worthwhile projects everywhere, the garden is understaffed and not particularly well-funded, so it is looking for volunteers for a variety of projects. My little ears perked up to learn that English-speaking tour guides are a need. Free training on the plants of the Yucatan coupled with a chance to tell stories and educate people on the biological wealth of this region sounds like a deal too good to pass up, so I think I know what I will be doing next winter.