Lorena brought over and planted this Arroyan her neighbor didn't want. By her first description, I thought it would be bigger. I guess we'll just have to wait longer.It has fruit and flowers but don't know if they are sweet. Of course like most things in Mexico it has medicinal uses.
The foto of fruit and flowers I found on the Internet and I'm really anxious to see if that beautiful.
The piña is my second, away from the fruit we eat. This one looks healthier than my previous one so keeping lots of water and fertilizer on it
I've seen it around before but didn't think much of it until Lorena pointed one out as a medicinal herb and also one for cooking. My neighbor across the street has some and it tasted a little like mint to me and neighbors think it tastes like Vicks Vapor Rub (Va-pa-roo) which is eucalyptus.
For some reason all the neighbors know it as Palo Santo so my Internet searches turned up empty until today. There is an amazing amount of recipe pages, fotos and videos for it's many uses. Mostly wraps for cooking but but just cut up for flavoring as well. Not sure if I can take cuttings or if it spreads in the roots. I will go to a vivero (plant nursery) if I have to. Don't know what is in that wrap below but it sure looks good.
The video is the only one I found in English (many in Spanish) ... and the info below is from Wikipedia to fill in a bit.
Hoja santa (Piper auritum) is an aromatic herb with a heart-shaped, velvety leaf which grows in tropic Mesoamerica. The name hoja santa means "sacred leaf" in Spanish. It is also known as yerba santa, hierba santa, Mexican pepperleaf, acuyo, tlanepa, anisillo, root beer plant, and sacred pepper.
The leaves can reach up to 30 centimeters (12 in) or more in size. The complex flavor of hoja santa is not so easily described; it has been compared to eucalyptus, licorice, sassafras, anise, nutmeg, mint, tarragon, and black pepper. The flavor is stronger in the young stems and veins.
It is native to the Americas, from northern South America to Mexico, and is also cultivated in southeast Florida.
It is often used in Mexican cuisine for tamales, the fish or meat wrapped in fragrant leaves for cooking, and as an essential ingredient in mole verde, the green sauce originated in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. It is also chopped to flavor soups, such as pozole, and eggs. In Central Mexico, it is used to flavor chocolate drinks. In southeastern Mexico, a green liquor called Verdín is made from hoja santa. It is also used for tea. American cheesemaker Paula Lambert created "Hoja santa cheese", goat cheese wrapped with the hoja santa leaves and imbued with its flavor. While typically used fresh, it is also used in dried form, although drying removes much of the flavor and makes the leaf too brittle to be used as a wrapper.
The essential oils within the leaf are rich in safrole, a substance also found in sassafras, which has been shown to be carcinogenic in animals. In 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned sassafras bark along with sassafras oil and safrole as flavoring agents because of their carcinogenic properties and the Council of Europe imposed the same ban in 1974, although toxicological studies show that humans do not process safrole into its carcinogenic metabolite.
I'd noticed this bush for a few years because of it's shape but back then it was less than a meter high. This lot is directly behind mine and I'm often over there chasing ant nests that love my Ivy. The next time I noticed it was because it was suddenly a tree. Suddenly being something like six months but also many months without rain and nobody waters it..
Wonder Tree
The Berries
Hugo passing by noticed a neighbor harvesting the berries and he asked about them. She said they are Arandanos (cranberry), are medicinal and she makes an "agua" out of them. I tried a couple of the red ones and they had almost no taste. Cranberries are a vine that grows on the ground or a bog .... can't be a tree.
So looking up Arandanos it seems there are 450 varieties so I guess there could be a tree in there somewhere. Then they are almost all listed as growing in northern climates, nothing about Mexico let alone tropical Mexico. Search for "Arandanos Mexico" and tons of them are being sold on Mercado Libre and are not cheap. Someday I may find out more about this interesting mystery but I'll take my time.
The construction of the house finished in April 2011 and I'm pretty much settled in. As of March 2014 I'm in preparation for rain mode for this coming summer. That includes sealing and painting things and dealing with drainage issues from last year.
