Sacred plants of the Maya forest

Some of the Central American rainforest's hidden treasures are being revealed by the Maya, more than a millennium after their passing. A study of the giant trees and beautiful flowers depicted in Maya art has identified which they held sacred.

Created during the Maya Classic Period, the depictions are so accurate they could help researchers spot plants with hitherto unknown medicinal uses. The research is published in the journal Economic Botany.

Plants played a significant role in the ecology, culture and rituals of the Maya people, whose artwork reflected the rich diversity of plant life around them. But while numerous examples of such artwork exist, few have been studied to see exactly which plants they depict.

So natural historian and archaeologist Charles Zidar of Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis, US, and botanist Wayne Elisens of the University of Oklahoma, Norman, US, decided to find out. They hope to discover plants of importance to the Maya that are either unknown to modern people, or have since been forgotten.

The team's first analyses focused on artwork produced within the southern lowland region of the Maya, located in the modern countries of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. They examined more than 2,500 images of Maya ceramics created within the Maya Classical Period of AD 250 to 900.
The images are held within an image collection taken by Justin and Barbara Kerr, curated by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, based in Crystal River, Florida, US.

In particular, the two men searched for depictions of bombacoids, a diverse lineage of trees in the Neotropics characterised by swollen or spiny trunks and big, colourful, conspicuous flowers with long folding petals. Across different ceramics, Zidar and Elisens found depictions of five species. (BBC News)