Since early March that's been the case with a certain tree species growing in Hacienda Chichen's Reserve. In the first or second week of March I came upon several thick-stemmed, dry-season-leafless, smallish trees about 15 feet tall (4.5m) in full flower, as shown above.

I'd never seen anything like that so I knocked down some flowers, of which only one was open. It was a tiny, unisexual male flower with three obvious stamens. Each stamen's two emptied anther cells were topped by roundish "ears" of a kind I've never seen -- maybe in wind they cause the anthers to shake out their pollen. Between the stamens were brown tings I couldn't figure out. The whole thing is shown below:

I spent hours on the Internet using all my botanical sills but finally I gave up. Then in early May -- along with many trees that had lost their leaves for the dry season -- the mystery trees appeared with both fruits and leaves, as mind-bogglingly shown below:

The leaves looked rather familiar, like the Chaya I eat each day, which is a member of the Euphorbia Family. But have you ever seen fruits anything like those? Each one-seeded, samara-type fruit bears two rabbit-ear wings, presumably to help with wind dispersal. Even with this extra information and more hours on the Internet, again I had to give up.

Finally this week the trees began dropping their mature, one-seeded fruits, some of which you can see below:

Also, now the leaves are expanded, revealing that they are "palmately lobed" -- with segments like thick fingers radiating from the palm of a hand -- as shown below:

Having a mature fruit in hand, finally I've figured it out, and it's wonderful. The trees belong to a family I've never seen before, apparently referred to in English as the Hernandia Family, the Hernandiaceae. On the Phylogenetic Tree of Life the Hernandicaceae usually is placed near the Laurel Family. The tree itself is GYROCARPUS JATROPHIFOLIUS, and the only English name I can find for it is Helicopter Tree, referring to the way fruits spin in the wind as they fall. My Maya friends have nothing to say about it.

Helicopter Trees are spottily distributed throughout much of southern Mexico and Central America, but apparently nowhere are they common. Little is known about it. It's a great find, right here on Hacienda Chichen's Reserve.

And if anyone out there is an expert in weird tropical American trees, I have another species I'm stuck on as well... I'll gladly send pictures.