Brugmansia spp. Alistair Hay, one of the authors of the truly exquisite book Huanduj: Brugmansia, affirms that “the Incan people were relative newcomers to the Peruvian scene, bringing diverse Indigenous groups under their domination, and they came late in their history to embrace the sacred plants which had long been a central part of the…

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…

Latua pubiflora Olivos Herreros calls Latúe, perhaps the rarest of all psychoactive plants, “the classic hallucinogen of Mapuche ethnology.” One researcher translated the name of the plant as “Land of the Dead”, perhaps in reference to the isolated region on the mountainous coast of southern Chile (from Valdivia to Chiloé), which is its sole habitat…