Brugmansia spp.
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Brugmansia spp.

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…

Brunfelsia grandiflora
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Brunfelsia grandiflora

Brunfelsia grandiflora The stomata are the oval-shaped apertures in plants through which carbon dioxide necessary for photosynthesis enters. They also release oxygen. In some of the confocal images of Brunfelsia grandiflora included here, the stomata are especially evident and could serve as an opportunity to consider how breath links humans and plants. In keeping with the…

Mimosa pudica (a new “sacred” plant)
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Mimosa pudica (a new “sacred” plant)

Mimosa pudica (a new “sacred” plant) Mimosa pudica most definitely has become an important performer in pioneering research on plant-memory.   Monica Gagliano considers this species “a strange and extraordinary bridge between two kingdoms of life—the animal and the vegetal, the sensitive and the insensitive.”  After a series of rigorous scientific tests conducted in Italy in…

Erythroxylum novogranatense
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Erythroxylum novogranatense

Erythroxylum novogranatense One of my all-time favorite books is Wade Davis’s One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest. It is full of harrowing adventures, heroic feats in the name of science and a deep respect for traditional Amerindian botanical knowledge as studied by the legendary Richard Evans Schultes and his protégés Timothy…

Nicotiana rustica
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Nicotiana rustica

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…

Anadenanthera spp.
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Anadenanthera spp.

Anadenanthera spp. Constantino Manuel Torres and David B. Repke, authors of Anadenanthera: Visionary Plant of Ancient South America, the most comprehensive study of this plant maintain: “The genus Anadenanthera was, together with tobacco, one of the most widely used shamanic inebriants.  It is primarily South American in distribution and includes two species with two varieties…

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