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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the November 6, 2006 Newsletter, issued from Issued from Diego Nuñez's office above Restaurante "Isla Contoy," Río Lagartos, on the Yucatan Peninsula's northern coast (~N21.60°, ~W88.16°), Yucatán state, MÉXICO
JABIN, JABIM, FISH-POISON TREE
Both at my earlier Yucatan locations and at Ek Balam one of the most common and conspicuous trees in the hacked- over, scrubby, weedy forest is what they called Jabim where I was earlier, Jabin here, and in English is often called such things as Fish-poison Tree, Fish Fuddle and Jamaican Dogwood. It's PISCIDIA PISCIPULA, a member of the Bean Family, with pinnately compound leaves very like ash-tree leaves, except that they arise singly at the stem nodes (are alternate, not opposite like ash). That's my picture of a Jabin leaf and an enlarging stem shoot above.
The "Fish-poison" and "Fish Fuddle" names point to one of the tree's most striking features: Its bark can be ground up, sprinkled into a pool of fishy water, and the fish will rise to the top, gasping for air, and then can be captured. Among the chemicals causing this paralysis are some known as rotenones. These chemicals affect cold-blooded creatures only, so people can eat stymied fish without problems.
As so often is the case, chemicals problematic in one dosage or environment are medicinal in another. One site says that the chemicals in Jabin are "sedative, anodyne, analgesic, antitussive, spasmolytic, anti-inflammatory." Jabin extracts can be used for "neuralgia, migraine, toothache, insomnia, spasmodic dysmenorrhoea. Specifically indicated in insomnia due to neuralgia or nervous tension." More info like this can be found at http://www.purplesage.org.uk/profiles/jamaicadogwood.htm.
Here in interior northern Yucatan where drainage is subterranean we don't have rivers, streams or lakes, so the Maya I've talked to have no idea about Jabin's fish- fuddling properties. What they do know is that the tree's heartwood is remarkably hard. I can attest to that, for I've certainly bent my share of nails trying to hammer it. Most of the time when I ask what kind of wood could possibly be so hard, the reply is "Jabin."
from the April 25, 2010 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO; limestone bedrock, elevation ~39m (~128ft), ~N20.676°, ~W88.569°
HABIM FLOWERING
So many plants are suddenly flowering that I fear over-flowering you. However, yet another conspicuously flowering, large tree very important because of its commonness and usefulness is the Habim, Jabim or Jabin. (In Spanish the J is pronounced as an English H, and in Maya "m" sounds are interchangeable with "n" sounds, to the desperation of students of the language!) In English usually we call Habim Fish-Poison Tree for reasons given in the section above.
You can see the flowering top of a large Habim tree, below:
The ground beneath the tree photographed above was littered with so many fallen blossoms that it looked as if a snow flurry had passed through. You can see a flower, looking a lot like a garden bean flower, below:
Habim flowers have the right to look like bean flowers because the tree is a member of the Bean Family. The flower is classically "papilionaceous," typical of the Bean Family. In other words, it shows bilateral symmetry instead of radial, and of its five petals its top petal, the "banner" or "standard," is enlarged, its two side petals, or "wings," are held out like two vertically-held hands guarding the sexual parts between them, and the two lower petals are fused into a single scoop-shaped "keel," which usually folds around the sexual parts and arcs upward.
It's a little unusual for a flower to bear such a conspicuous green spot. This got me to wondering what a bee would see looking at a white flower with a green spot. On the Internet I found that bees can see only four colors, of which one color, ultraviolet, is invisible to normal human vision. Bees are blind to red, and to them orange, yellow and green are the same color –- yellow.
Therefore, a honeybee visiting a white Habim flower with a green spot will see a flower with a yellow spot. What color the flower itself is is hard to say because it might be reflecting UV.
from the May 16, 2010 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO; limestone bedrock, elevation ~39m (~128ft), ~N20.676°, ~W88.569°
HABIMS FRUITING
Now the Habims are fruiting and the fruits just as splendiferously transluce sunlight as earlier the flower clusters did. You can see a picture of this taken by my friends Jim and JoAnn -- who live near here and have a telephoto lens that reaches into treetops better than mine -- below:
Most people interpret what's shown as flower clusters. However, they're clusters of very unusual fruits. Since Habims are members of the Bean Family the fruits are legumes. The dangling legumes themselves are very slender, but each legume bears four paper-thin, fin- like "wings." A typical four-winged legume with its pedicel emerging from a cuplike calyx is seen below:
