| from the November 6, 2006 Newsletter, issued from Issued
from Diego Nuñez's office above Restaurante "Isla Contoy," Río Lagartos,
Yucatán, MÉXICO JABIN, JABIM, FISH-POISON TREE  Both at my earlier Yucatan locations and at Ek Balam
one of the most common and conspicuous trees in the hacked- over, scrubby, weedy forest is
what they called Jabim where I was earlier, Jabin here, and in English is often called
such things as Fish-poison Tree, Fish Fuddle and Jamaican Dogwood. It's PISCIDIA
PISCIPULA, a member of the Bean Family, with pinnately compound leaves very like ash-tree
leaves, except that they arise singly at the stem nodes (are alternate, not opposite like
ash). That's my picture of a Jabin leaf and an enlarging stem shoot above.The "Fish-poison" and "Fish Fuddle" names point to one of the tree's most striking features: Its bark can be ground up, sprinkled into a pool of fishy water, and the fish will rise to the top, gasping for air, and then can be captured. Among the chemicals causing this paralysis are some known as rotenones. These chemicals affect cold-blooded creatures only, so people can eat stymied fish without problems. As so often is the case, chemicals problematic in one dosage or environment are medicinal in another. One site says that the chemicals in Jabin are "sedative, anodyne, analgesic, antitussive, spasmolytic, anti-inflammatory." Jabin extracts can be used for "neuralgia, migraine, toothache, insomnia, spasmodic dysmenorrhoea. Specifically indicated in insomnia due to neuralgia or nervous tension." More info like this can be found at http://www.purplesage.org.uk/profiles/jamaicadogwood.htm. Here in interior northern Yucatan where drainage is subterranean we don't have rivers, streams or lakes, so the Maya I've talked to have no idea about Jabin's fish- fuddling properties. What they do know is that the tree's heartwood is remarkably hard. I can attest to that, for I've certainly bent my share of nails trying to hammer it. Most of the time when I ask what kind of wood could possibly be so hard, the reply is "Jabin." from the April 25, 2010 Newsletter issued from
Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO You can see the flowering top of a large Habim tree, below:
The ground beneath the tree photographed above was littered with so many fallen blossoms that it looked as if a snow flurry had passed through. You can see a flower, looking a lot like a garden bean flower, below:
Habim flowers have the right to look like bean flowers because the tree is a member of the Bean Family. The flower is classically "papilionaceous," typical of the Bean Family. In other words, it shows bilateral symmetry instead of radial, and of its five petals its top petal, the "banner" or "standard," is enlarged, its two side petals, or "wings," are held out like two vertically-held hands guarding the sexual parts between them, and the two lower petals are fused into a single scoop-shaped "keel," which usually folds around the sexual parts and arcs upward. It's a little unusual for a flower to bear such a conspicuous green spot. This got me to wondering what a bee would see looking at a white flower with a green spot. On the Internet I found that bees can see only four colors, of which one color, ultraviolet, is invisible to normal human vision. Bees are blind to red, and to them orange, yellow and green are the same color –- yellow. Therefore, a honeybee visiting a white Habim flower with a green spot will see a flower with a yellow spot. What color the flower itself is is hard to say because it might be reflecting UV. from the May 16, 2010 Newsletter issued from Hacienda
Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
Most people interpret what's shown as flower clusters. However, they're clusters of very unusual fruits. Since Habims are members of the Bean Family the fruits are legumes. The dangling legumes themselves are very slender, but each legume bears four paper-thin, fin- like "wings." A typical four-winged legume with its pedicel emerging from a cuplike calyx is seen below:
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