Tepezcohuite

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

A brush of exposed stamens with accessible nectar and abundant pollen, worked heavily by Africanized honey bees across its Latin American range.

Worth knowing

A major dry-season source in Chiapas and in the Brazilian caatinga, and one that increases rather than decreases with land clearance — which is an uncomfortable thing to be able to say about a honey plant.

Flowering

In flower

November to February (northern hemisphere)

Dry-season flowering in Mexico; the Brazilian caatinga populations flower on the opposite half of the year.

When nectar flows

Heavy and dependable, and the tree flowers young and densely on ground nothing else is using.

What it does to the honey

Gives a mid amber honey with a warm floral sweetness and a faint tannic dryness from the tree's very high tannin content.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on poor, disturbed, often eroded ground in a seasonally dry tropical climate.

Size

5-8 m.

Native range

Southern Mexico through Central America to northeastern Brazil, characteristically on disturbed and degraded ground.

Suits

Farm scale

• A pioneer species used for erosion control and firewood, and a nitrogen fixer.
• It thickens into impenetrable thorn scrub on abandoned land.

What it looks like

A slender thorny tree with fine feathery bipinnate leaves and abundant fluffy white bottlebrush flower spikes, borne heavily while the tree is nearly leafless.