Belize, Day 3: Medicinal plants and Cacao Plantation

Monday, December 13

A banana tree grew right outside our casita. I had seen banana trees every time I’d been to the tropics, but this was my first opportunity to see one early in the morning. The fruits develop at the top of a long stalk. A huge flower bud hangs at the opposite end. In the early morning, one sepal curls up from the bud revealing a layer of flowers. Little black bees or wasps busily visit the flowers, all in vain from the banana’s point of view. By afternoon, the sepal and all the flowers are on the ground. On our cave hike, Edgar mentioned that the banana tree sets fruit only once and then dies. It also apparently sets fruit only at the top of the floral stalk. All flowers after that initial fruit development are aborted. It seems like a crazy amount of wasted effort to produce 2 meters or more of flower stalk with no additional reproduction. This leads to several questions. If the first fruits are lost, will subsequent flowers develop into more fruits? Has selective breeding contributed to this odd flowering strategy? After all, bananas no longer have viable seeds, so even the process of setting fruit does not result in reproduction. All our bananas come from cuttings. Are there any wild bananas anywhere? So many things to ponder.

The entire banana inflorescence with bananas at the top and the flower bud at the bottom

One sepal peels back to reveal the flowers

Close up of the flowers and their pollinators

Another plant in the landscaping was attractive to butterflies. This photo shows a banded peacock butterfly (black, red, and white) on the left and a Julia butterfly (almost entirely orange) on the right.

Banded peacock butterfly, left; Julia butterfly, right

After breakfast, we met Pablo and Barnaby for a hike through the rain forest to look at plants that the Maya had used for medicine. We saw all of the usual, such as tea vine, black poisonwood, gumbo limbo, give-and-take tree, and Chinese root. Chinese root was used for centuries as a contraceptive. A U.S. anthropologist called it the most valuable plant of the last century, according to Pablo. He also said that Chinese root was the origin of the idea of oral contraception, but I have my doubts.

As we passed a palm, Pablo spooked two bats. I didn’t see them. He pointed to one of the leaves and explained how the bats bite only through the veins all the way around so the leaf ends tip down to create a shelter for the bats. How did that behavior evolve?

Bats chew part-way through the palm leaf in a circle to create a shelter. The chew marks are the brown spots between the central green and the dusky grey.

We passed a spectacular example of a sapodilla tree. Back in the day, the bark of these trees were cut in V’s to release the chicle, which was the original chewing gum, first used by the ancient Maya. It became commercially important at the beginning of the 20^th century. The sap was collected, boiled, and exported in blocks. By the 1960’s synthetic chewing gum replaced the natural chicle for most gum manufacturing.

After completing a fairly level loop along a creek looking at medicinal plants, we headed upward to the tower. I had already achieved underwear-to-skin fusion. The sweat poured out of me.

Heading up the trail

The view of Sleeping Giant and the Sibun River valley from the tower

We had chicken fajitas for lunch. The fajitas were exactly like stew chicken only without bones. The plate a little dish of chicken, peppers, and onions in red sauce on a plate with three fresh, soft flour tortillas, and a dollop of refried beans with two corn chips stuck in it. The table had big bowls of sour cream and pico de gallo. 

Chicken fajitas

The alternate selection was fish and chips. Someone asked for lemon for the fish.The waiter brought a dish of wedges (lemons are green in Belize) carved as snails. We drank gallons of fruit punch. So delicious!

Lemon wedge "snails"

After lunch, we went to the cacao plantation. We were pleased to see that Rupert was still working there and would do our tour. The first thing Rupert showed us this year was a hay wagon full of seedlings. Rupert explained that the root stocks had overgrown the greenhouse. He gave us his gentle, beautiful smile and admitted that they had been too ambitious. They now had to plant the root stocks in the field and do the grafting out there. I felt sorry for the women that do the grafting. It wouldn’t be so bad on a table in the greenhouse, but with the seedlings in the ground, that would be a lot of bending.
Rupert saw the blank looks on the students’ faces, and started explaining about grafting. The root stocks can come from any seed source. They look for vigorous growth, strong anchors, and disease resistance. Then they graft on buds from trees that they know produce good seeds.

I interjected that we raise apples in our area the same way. The root stock is matched to the soil, and the branches that will bear the fruit you want are grafted to them. That seemed to make sense to them.

We moved next to the seed fermentation area. Rupert told us that banana leaves have a white starchy underside that begins the fermentation process. I didn’t remember that from last year. He removes the banana leaves after the second day. He didn’t have as many beans fermenting this year. He invited the students to put their hand in the beans to feel how ware they were. I pointed out the fruit flies and the larva on the beans when Rupert didn’t say anything about them.

We moved to the newly-constructed drying tables under corrugated fiberglass roofs. Rupert showed us how the beans had to be stirred. He had two tools. One was just a piece of wood about a foot long. The other was a pole with a board perpendicular to the handle. He used the short piece to pull the beans away from the edge. He then used the pole to stir the beans and spread them back into a single layer. Each table can hold one box of beans, which is 2000 pounds. During the peak of the season, they had more than 50,000 pounds of beans in the facility. To avoid heat stroke during the summer, the workers could only be at the tables for 20 minutes at a time. 

Rupert demonstrates stirring the cacao beans on the drying table

We went inside the building so Rupert could show us the rest of the processing. The beans have to be sorted by hand. Another improvement that Rupert suggested when he was at the other facility was in the sorting process. The table that they were using was rectangular and had 2x4s all around the edge to keep the beans contained. As the workers sorted the beans, they would have to lift them over the edge. Rupert redesigned the table as a cross so four people could work at once. He made a similar table with three arms for the Belmopan site. The outer end of each arm was open so the beans could slide into the bag. “It’s nice,” Rupert said, “the ladies can talk or listen to music while they work.”

Rupert's sorting table

Rupert was so humble and unassuming, yet it was apparent that he was a very valuable employee of Maya Mountain Cacao.

His record keeping has revealed that mature cacao trees in full sun produced the most beans. It stands to reason because all that energy has to come from photosynthesis, but because cacao naturally grow in the understory, the general practice was to keep them in the shade.  They are now planting the seedlings with coconut palm. The palms grow quickly to provide shade to the seedlings while they need it. Their roots grow straight down and don’t compete with the cacao. The coconuts are economically valuable, but the trees don’t get so large that they shade the mature cacao.

We went a short way down the road to where new cacao and coconuts palms were growing. A crew of workers with machetes and weed whackers was busy clearing brush nearby. 

Coconut palm (left) and cacao seedling (right) with crew clearing vegetation in the back

I saw a cacao seeding with its top bent over and tied down and asked Rupert about it. He pointed to a branch at the side, which I had not noticed. The graft was doing well so the top of the root stock had been bent over to allow the graft to take over as the leader. After it grew a little more, the top of the root stock would be pruned off.

Root stock bent over and tied with a blue string to allow the graft (right) to develop

We had a great time at the cacao plantation. Barnaby was suitably impressed. It’s possible that other groups will soon be able to have the Maya Mountain experience.

Group shot in the cacao grove

I had a towel turtle on my bed when we got back to the casita. 

Towel turtle