The Jícaro (Crescentia alata), called the Mexican Calabash or Gourd Tree, has provided containers for humanity since before memory. Its hard-shelled, round fruits hanging directly from trunk and branches are the original bowls, cups, and ladles of Mesoamerica—vessels that served civilizations from the Maya to today's rural communities. This small but distinctive tree of the dry forests is instantly recognizable by its spreading form, strange trunk-borne flowers, and the signature spherical gourds that give it purpose and name. In Costa Rica's Guanacaste, the Jícaro remains a living connection to traditional ways, still providing craft material and medicine as it has for thousands of years.

The Jícaro's strange flowers are perfectly designed for bats: Flower Adaptations: - Open at night - Musky, fermented odor - Pale/greenish color - Large, sturdy structure - Produced on trunk (accessible) Main Pollinators:

• Nectar-feeding bats - Especially leaf-nosed bats - Also some moths The Relationship: - Bats visit for nectar - Pollen on face transferred - Tree gets cross-pollination - Bats get food resource Conservation Implication:
• Jícaro depends on healthy bat populations - Loss of bats = less fruit production - Tree supports bat populations - Mutual dependency

Long before plastic, before clay pots became common, before metal vessels arrived with Europeans, the peoples of Mesoamerica had their bowls and cups growing on trees. The Jícaro provided then and provides now—hard-shelled gourds that need only to be hollowed and dried to become functional vessels. The Maya sipped their sacred cacao from jícaras. Rural Costa Ricans still drink from them today. These are not relics or curiosities but living tradition, trees planted and protected because they give something useful, something beautiful, something biodegradable in an age choking on plastic. The Jícaro stands in Guanacaste's pastures, its spreading form unmistakable, its spherical fruits hanging like promises from trunk and branch. Bats pollinate the strange night-blooming flowers; cattle eat the fallen fruit and spread the seeds. It's a perfect little ecosystem of mutual benefit, and humans have been part of it for thousands of years. When you drink from a jícara, you drink from history itself, from a tradition as old as civilization in these lands.