J'ai remarqué qu'il me serait difficile de rattraper le temps perdu. Je vais donc être beaucoup plus bref pour les prochains jours de mon voyage, le temps de revenir au présent.
On se lève le matin à 7h00, ce qui deviendra un habituel 6h15. Sur le chemin vers la ferme, qui est dans le département de Peten, nous pouvons voir le Bélize, quelques montagnes de l'autre coté de la rivière. Si on se force, on peut trouver un poste de garde au hant d'une de ces montagnes.
At the farm, we receive a guided tour of the whole place, included the new hou
se being built, the platanos, lemons, oranges, a weird lemon-orange, mandarines, the tilapia fish ponds, cinnamon, coffee, cocoa, nani, a plant that tastes bad but is suppose to have many healthy propreties, milagroso, a small seed that when you bite in it, you cancel out all the acidity in what you eat after, corn, pinneaples, manacas, a tree that give good leaves to build roofs and also gives a fruit similar to coconuts with which oil is made, and as I would later find out, cotton plants. I realised that most fruit leaves have a bit of a taste of the fruit it holds.
se being built, the platanos, lemons, oranges, a weird lemon-orange, mandarines, the tilapia fish ponds, cinnamon, coffee, cocoa, nani, a plant that tastes bad but is suppose to have many healthy propreties, milagroso, a small seed that when you bite in it, you cancel out all the acidity in what you eat after, corn, pinneaples, manacas, a tree that give good leaves to build roofs and also gives a fruit similar to coconuts with which oil is made, and as I would later find out, cotton plants. I realised that most fruit leaves have a bit of a taste of the fruit it holds. En este día, encontramos todos los campesinos y el perro de la finca, Chapin, que es tambien el nombre de los guatemaltecos. Despues, hablamos de la casa y de como se va a contruirla. Tambien trabajamos un poco. Cuando regressamos à Paracaidistas, tomo una buena cervesa y leyo sobre el hamac.
En soirée, nous jouons encore à Skipbo, un jeu de carte.
You raised my curiosity up on some of the plants you listed. Here’s what I found:
RépondreSupprimerI think maybe “nani” is actually “NONI” as listed in Wikipedia: Morinda citrifolia, commonly known as great morinda, Indian mulberry, Nunaakai (Tamil Nadu, India) , Mengkudu (Malaysia), beach mulberry, Tahitian noni, cheese fruit or noni (from Hawaiian) - a tree in the coffee family. The plant flowers and fruits all year round and produces a small white flower. The fruit is a multiple fruit that has a pungent odor when ripening, and is hence also known as cheese fruit or even vomit fruit. It is oval and reaches 4–7 centimetres (1.6–2.8 in) in size. At first green, the fruit turns yellow then almost white as it ripens. It contains many seeds. It is sometimes called starvation fruit. Despite its strong smell and bitter taste, the fruit is nevertheless eaten as a famine food and, in some Pacific islands, even a staple food, either raw or cooked. Southeast Asians and Australian Aborigines consume the fruit raw with salt or cook it with curry. The seeds are edible when roasted.
For the “milagroso” (or “miraculous”) seed, I think it is, again according to Wikipedia, the miracle fruit, or miracle berry plant (Synsepalum dulcificum), that produces berries that, when eaten, cause sour foods (such as lemons and limes) subsequently consumed to taste sweet. The berry, which contains active polyphenols was first documented by explorer Chevalier des Marchais who searched for many different fruits during a 1725 excursion to its native West Africa. Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry from shrubs and chewed it before meals. The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet (6.1 m) high in its native habitat, but does not usually grow higher than ten feet in cultivation, and it produces two crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. It is an evergreen plant that produces small red berries, with flowers that are white and which are produced for many months of the year. The seeds are about the size of coffee beans.
Finally, “manaca” looks to be "Attalea cohune", Common Names: Cohune palm, rain tree, American oil palm, corozo palm or manaca palm, one of nature's most majestic trees, with fronds that seem to erupt right out of the ground like a volcano! Juvenile cohune palms (and some varieties) grow with their trunk underground for many years. The adult tree has a characteristic and massive crown of dark green, pinnate (feather-shaped) leaves extending almost straight up. Each leaf can be up to 33 ft (10 m) long. The leaves crown a solitary trunk that grows 20-50 ft (6.1-15 m) tall and 1-2 ft (0.3-0.6 m) in diameter. The leaflets composing the compound leaves are regularly arranged and spread out in the same plane as the leaf. The leaflets appear to rain down from the leaves, thus earning the common name of rain tree. Cohune palms produce flower clusters up to 5 ft (1.5 m) long, cloistered among the leaves. They may have all male, all female, or both kinds on the same tree. The cream colored flowers yield to brownish yellow fruits, oval-elliptical in shape, 1-3 in (2.5-7.6 cm) long and 1-2 in (2.5-5 cm) in diameter. The fruits are carried on long drooping stalks (peduncles) from November through February. The cohune palm is a valuable source of oil and was one of the most important trees in the Mayan culture. The seeds of the cohune palm yield cohune oil which is used extensively as a lubricant, for cooking, soapmaking and lamp oil. The heart of the cohune palm, located in the last four feet of the trunk before the base of the leaf stems, is considered a delicacy. The fruits of the cohune palm are made into sweet meats and are also used as livestock feed. Cohune leaves are used as thatching material for roofs. Palm wine is produced from the sap of the heart of the cohune.
So much for my botany research for today!!
Holà Maxim! Tu parles de la cannelle (cinnamon): est-ce que c'est une grande plante ou bien un arbre??? J'ai acheté, du Viet-Nam, un pot avec couvercle pour conserver le sucre et l'intérieur du pot est fait en écorce de cannelle: est-ce possible?
RépondreSupprimerEl perro CHAPIN: una fotografia, por favor?
C'est bien de te voir dans un hamac guatémaltèque. Hasta luego!
Ginette, lundi 18 janvier 2010 @ 15h17
Thank you for all the information on the plants here. It is hard to get detailed information from people here because its all sort of general common knowledge that no one really wonders about.
RépondreSupprimerEt oui c'est bien de la canelle dont je parle. Pour l'instant ce sont des petits arbres qui vont peut-être grandir un peu mais je ne crois pas qu'ils deviendront très grand. Par contre, surement assez gros pour pouvoir en faire des pots. Je prévois inclure une photo de Chapin très bientôt.
Gracias a todos por sus commentarios. Ellos me motivan mucho a escribir en mi blog.
One more botanical note - I found some information on a lemon-orange crossbreed called the "Meyer Lemon". Maybe that's what you've got there.
RépondreSupprimerFrom Wikipedia:
The Meyer lemon (Citrus meyeri) is a citrus fruit, native to China, thought to be a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin orange or sweet orange. The Meyer lemon was introduced to the United States in 1908 by the agricultural explorer Frank Nicholas Meyer, an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture who collected a sample of the plant on a trip to China. It is commonly grown in China potted as an ornamental plant. It became popular as a food item in the United States after being rediscovered by chefs, such as Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, during the California Cuisine revolution. Popularity further climbed when Martha Stewart started featuring them in her recipes.
The Meyer lemon is also known as the Valley lemon in southern Texas due to its popularity in the Rio Grande Valley region.
Meyer lemon trees are around 6 to 10 feet (2–3 meters) tall at maturity. Their leaves are dark green and shiny. The flowers are white with a purple base and fragrant. The fruit is yellow and rounder than a true lemon with a slight orange tint when ripe. It has a sweeter, less acidic flavor than the more common lemon and a fragrant edible skin.
Meyer lemons are reasonably hardy, but grow well in a warm climate. They are also fairly vigorous. A tree grown from seed usually begins fruiting in four years. While trees produce fruit throughout the year, the majority of the crop is ready in winter. Trees require adequate water, but less in the winter. For maximum yield, they should be fertilized during growing periods.