Palm(less) Sunday in Quito

This was the scene outside every church in Quito on Palm Sunday — vendors doing a brisk business selling a wide variety of "palms" for people to take to mass.

Everyone had to have one, so business was good (click on the pictures to get a better look).

However, there were very few real palm leaves in evidence. Why? We happened to see a flyer asking people to not use palm leaves because it harmed an endangered Ecuadorian parrot that uses palm trees for it habitat. We saw a few of what appeared to be palm leaves but most of the "palms" used other plants.

Rosemary (romero in Spanish) was very common. It may grow wild in Eduador. In fact we saw an huge rosemary bush growing next to our hostal in Quito. I can't say the spice has shown up in any of our food.

So it was mostly a palm-less Sunday in Quito.