HUANO PALM

Above you see an eight-ft-tall palm common around here, SABAL YAPA. Sabal species are recognized by North Americans as the palmetto palms so typical of the US Deep South. Here the Maya refer to Sabal yapa as Huano (WAN-oh). Most of the palm's fronds in the picture have been removed because people here use them for thatching roofs.

When identifying palms a point to keep in mind is that the vast majority of palm species fall neatly into one of two broad groups: the fan palms, whose leaf segments radiate from the top of the leaf stem, or petiole, forming a ± circular blade, and; the feather-leaved or pinnate palms, such as the Coconut Palm, whose leaf segments arise from a rachis passing through the center of a long leaf blade, like pinnae arising from the rachis of a feather

Palmettos are regarded as fan palms, even though their blades don't fit the fan-palm pattern exactly.

Above you can see how the Huano's petiole, shooting up from the lower right, continues a bit up through the blade, but grows narrow fast, and soon piddles into a little droop, resulting in the frond being ± circular in outline but with an asymmetrical crease in the middle. Palmetto blades suggest a transition phase between fan palms and feather-leaved palms. Palm blades exhibiting this curious midrib behavior are said to be "costapalmate," and this costapalmateness makes palmettos easy to distinguish from other fan palms in the field. Palmettos are also distinguished from other fan palms by their blade stems, or petioles, NOT bearing spines.

Don't confuse smooth-petioled palmettos in the genus Sabal with saw-toothed-petioled SAW Palmettos of the genus Serenoa, often forming dense, leg-chewing thickets along the US Coastal Plain from South Carolina to Mississippi. Palmettos and Saw Palmettos are two different things.

Huano can grow into a tall, slender-trunked tree, as the following picture showing three Huanos in different stages of development shows::

Embracing about 190 genera and 2000 species, the Palm Family, the Arecaceae, is big and varied. Sixteen species are recognized in the Huano's genus Sabal, and most Sabal species cluster around the Caribbean Sea.

FROM THE OCTOBER 30, 2006 NEWSLETTER:

THATCHING A ROOF WITH HUANO

As I type this, on the ground across the one-lane road from Genesis's entrance, you can see what's shown at the right.

What you see there is a number of fan-palm fronds drying on the ground so that later they can be artfully twisted and bent, and arrayed upon wooden poles in a way that they form part of a thatched roof. All the roofs I've seen at Genesis so far are thatched, including my own room's.

Among other things this means that each day there's a bit more gecko poop on the beds and floor, for the thatch provides wonderful gecko habitat. Geckos are encouraged here, however, since they keep down the bugs and other critters. Also, one just has to like thatched roofs since they are organic, sustainable, and providing them and putting them together provides employment for the locals, helping them stay at home instead of leaving to work at Cancún or the US, which too often is the case.

Anyway, you can see the undersurface of a finished roof (the one over Genesis's dining hall) at the left.

Locally the palms providing the thatch are called "Huano." In English they're known as Bay Palmetto and Thatch Palm. Best I can figure out, they're SABAL YAPA in Latin.