Ethnobotanical Garden Part 1 (lots of pics!)

Pearl and I took the guided tour on Sat. July 24. It was very interesting, and I tried to take alot of notes for mom (they don't have a brochure or anything)! Most all the plants and trees in the garden are used/ were used by the people for one thing or another (medicine, food, washing etc.), hence the term ethnobotanical (1. The plant lore and agricultural customs of a people. 2. The study of such lore and customs.)

The garden was started in 1998, and is a work in progress collecting endemic flora from all over Oaxaca state. These rocks are naturally colored (copper, iron etc.), some rocks were half red, half yellow!

The foods part of the garden (that's Santo Domingo - former convent - in the background).

Kapok (a.k.a. Pachote) tree trunk. Ouch!

Biznaga cactus (with guide Diego for a size comparison). Biznaga are endangered because their flesh is sweet to eat. This particular one is over 1000 years old and weighs approx. 5 tons.

Colorine tree, the fruit is very poisonous (to touch, eat, whatever... there seemed to be lots of toxic plants in the EB Garden!)

Copal tree. Notice the greenish wood (one limb has been pruned on the far left)

 and how the bark sheds.

Part of the filtration system. Rain fails on these rocks and through the cracks to the giant cistern underground. They can collect 1.3 MILLION liters on water in 2 weeks.

A type of maguey (agave).

The pre-cursor to today's corn, each pod/ little ear is a single row of seeds/kernels, you can see the silks sticking out of the pods... Through careful cultivation, people ended up with what we today call corn (and all the varieties thereof).