Bourreria huanita A team of researchers led by Iandra Holzmann has discovered that the rare, nearly extinct tree Bourreria huanita that grows in Mesoamerica and was used ritually by the Mexica and Maya cultures has medicinal properties that exhibit sedative, antidepressant and hypnotic activities in mice. According to these scientists, “Ethnobotanical surveys conducted in Guatemala…
Nicotiana rustica Johannes Wilbert’s impossibly comprehensive study of tobacco has stood the test of decades: “Tobacco in traditional South American societies […] is shown to have played a culture-building role. Functioning as an actualizing principle between the telluric and the cosmic, it has served to validate the normative behavior and to affirm cultural institutions.” Wilbert…
Cannabis spp. Schultes and Hofmann (with Rätsch), the authors of Plants of the Gods, write of a relationship between Cannabis and humanity that “has existed now probably for ten thousand years—since the discovery of agriculture in the Old World.” They document ancient uses of this multi-purpose plant in India, China and elsewhere. Cannabis was taken…
Ceiba pentandra One January, my wife Esthela Calderón and I secretly rushed Ceiba (as well as Cacao and Copal) leaves wrapped in damp paper towels and sealed in plastic bags across borders from our ancestral farm in Pueblo Redondo (Telica), Nicaragua all the way back to wintry Canton and the confocal microscope at St. Lawrence…
Amaranthus spp. Ricardo Ortiz describes the enormous importance of Amaranth as a basic food source in the pre-Columbian era and also how it was used as a sacred plant in rituals dedicated to the Aztec (Mexica) war god Huitzilopochtli. The seed was an integral part of the festivals in which human sacrifices were made. Consequently,…
Theobroma cacao Jonathan Ott is undoubtedly the person who has written most eloquently and profoundly about Cacao. In The Cacahuatl Eater: Ruminations of an Unabashed Chocolate Addict, Ott delineates the fascinating history of this plant in Mesoamerica and, in so doing, creates a broader definition of the sacred and why certain plants have more cultural…
Yagé (Complex) Microcosms is honored that Neil Logan, co-creator of the AgroforestryX.com Design Tool, and Jonathon Miller Weisberger, author of Rainforest Medicine: Preserving Indigenous Science and Biological Diversity in the Upper Amazon, have accepted the invitation to be guest writers for this new section of the Plant Index called The Yagé Complex. Their research and…
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