Rubber trees and the Mayan ball game

The rubber tree has played an important role in modern industrial society, but its influence on human history stretches back 3600 years, as a fascinating post at the Lower Dover Field Journal makes clear.

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A Giant Falls

The Guanacaste is one of the biggest tree species in Central America. A post in the Lower Dover Field Journal shows what it’s like to fell (or at least radically trim) one of them — a big lightning-killed specimen next to an electric line.

Unlike more developed countries, the power company doesn’t have access to large cherry pickers, and quite frankly, a tree of this size would require an enormous reach. So they took to the old fashion way, climbing, ropes, chainsaws, and a pulley rope system.

The Annato Tree: Friend or Foe?

That’s the title of a new post in a Belizean blog, Lower Dover Field Journal — a fascinating look at a tree fruit whose growing use in processed foods may be triggering food-related allergies.