Humans find the fruits bitter, tasting like a blend of menthol and pine resin. Seeds will be viable for 10 months if kept cool, dry and dark. Stumps will regenerate quickly and seeds germinate in moist soil. Cuttings 1.5-3 m (60-120 in) long and 10-15 cm (4-6 in) thick, spaced 3 m (117 in) apart will root easily to start a living fence. Birds, squirrels and other critters relish the fruits, often eating them before they turn their mature purplish. The Gumbo Limbo tree produces tiny green flowers, clusters of small fruits and seed pods. The Red Gumbo limbo or Chaca tree has a high salty soil tolerance and many medicinal qualities used by Maya healers in tea fusions, oils and anti-inflammatory ointments. The fruits are edible succulent red berries. 'Trees and Medicinal Plants Book 2 from Forests and Medicinal Trees. Strips of bark are boiled in water and then used topically for skin sores, measles, sunburn, insect bites, and rashes or drunk as tea to treat backaches, urinary tract infections, colds, flu, and fevers. The leaves are bright green and the flowers are creamy white. Thats the Gumbo-limbo tree, and its bark is a common topical remedy. It has a single trunk that is smooth and red. Also you can see the tree's grape-sized fruits, which appear deep in the dry season, in April or so. This Gumbo limbo can be propagated by just planting young branches to the ground, Maya people use it as posts for fencing their parcels that with time become mature trees. Native to tropical America, Gum Tree, Bursera simaruba, is a drought-tolerant, deciduous tree that reaches up to 25 m tall when fully matured. Water occasionally as it starts to take root and grow. Gumbo Limbos are drought resistant and are adapted to Florida’s climate. This will provide stability as the new tree puts out roots. However, the same species, Bursera simaruba, also grows in southern Florida, where it's called Gumbo-Limbo, so probably that's the best known English name we have.īelow, you can see Gumbo-Limbo's pinnately compound leaves, which look like those of the North's ash trees. When planting dig a deep enough hole to bury at least a quarter of the branch or clipping. The Maya call the tree Chakah, and many savvy visitors call it that, too. One of the most common and best-known trees in the Yucatan - in fact of most of Mexico - catches the eye because of its reddish, flaky bark, shown at the right. Bursera simaruba, commonly known as gumbo-limbo, copperwood, chaca, West Indian birch, naked Indian, and turpentine tree, is a tree species in the family Burseraceae, native to the Neotropics, from South Florida to Mexico and the Caribbean to Brazil, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Sponsored by the Backyard Nature Website ( just for the fun of it )Īlso, see selected plants & animals of YUCATAN | MEXICO 101 YUCATAN TREES INDEX GUMBO-LIMBO - Chaká This page is from the book 101 YUCATAN TREES
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