Passionvine

Passion flowers are so pretty. And unusual. Great vine for the garden. And the Gulf Fritillaries lay their eggs on it. So you get butterflies, too, if you are within their range.

But in addition, you can buy passionflower extracts to help decrease insomnia or anxiety. There is some evidence that it is effective. It can also cause hallucinations and psychosis in large doses.

But don't use garden plants as a sleep aid. Some species have cyanide in them. So some are more toxic than others.

(intoxicating plants)

Insects Get drunk?

Sarracenia flava By Stephencdickson - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60599735

Homer wrote about nepenthe, a drug to make people feel better and forget their woes. Kind of like alcohol. People noticed that insects acted drunk after drinking nectar from a carnivorous plant, so they named it Nepenthe. There is another carnivorous plant, Sarracenia flava, that has the same substance that affects insects: coniine. However, although the insects act drunk, they are actually getting paralyzed. So maybe they are not forgetting their woes at all. Maybe they are deep into misery over their woes. Unless there is something about coniine humans don't understand. So even though we may want to think of Nepenthe or Sarracenia as intoxicating plants, they are probably just toxic. 

Why do carnivorous plants want to catch insects anyway? It turns out they live in bogs or other wet habitats where all the nitrogen is washed away. All animals have significant stores of nitrogen, so they found away to attract and trap insects, some of the smallest and most available animals. Some have a sticky surface to trap insects. The Venus Fly Trap actually closes a leaf around them. Sarracenia and Nepenthe have ways to force insects into pool of water and digestive juices in their traps so that they drown. Plant are so clever!

Lavender

Lavender has a strong smell. Some people like it, but it is too strong for me. It is used in soaps, perfumes, lotions, etc. Egyptians used it for their mummies. Romans used it for cooking and bathing. The name comes from the Latin word for "wash."

The smell is designed to deter insects. It can be used as a sachet in drawers to repel moths.

It is also psychoactive. It calms people down and helps them sleep. It can even be better than prescription anti-anxiety drugs.

There are side-effects, however. Lavender is an endocrine disrupter. It can cause enlarged breast tissue in boys. That might work for someone who is interested in a male to female transition. But others may want to steer clear.

(intoxicating) (insects)

Artemisia annua

(Photo from    GonzalezAgroGardens)

Hundreds or species of Artemisia grow around this world. But this one, Artemisia annua, is a workhorse of medicinals. The common name is Sweet Wormwood, and it has been used to kill worms as an traditional medicinal. And in fact, it does kills worms, at least the flatworms that cause schistosomiasis. Biologist Pamela Weathers found that a tea made from Sweet Wormwood was more effective at curing the disease than the prescription drug PZQ.

This plant also works against malaria. We once had malaria in the USA, but we got rid of it killing mosquitoes, which is the vector. A guy in Texas encouraged bats by building huge bat houses. Also, insecticides were used to kill them. And standing water was drained to reduce the areas where mosquitoes could breed. But malaria continued to be a problem in other areas of the world. For a long time, it was treated with derivatives of quinine which was extracted from the chinchona tree. But the malaria became resistant to that drug. Over 200,000 compounds were tested worldwide to fine something to fight malaria. No dice. Then To Youyou came on the scene. She studied pharmacy in school and then learned about Chinese medicinal herbs. She screened over 600 plants on mice and discovered that a chemical derived from A. annua, artemisinin, could cure malaria. She got a Nobel for her work in 2015.

Subsequently, a professor at UC Berkeley, Jay Keasling, figured out how to modify yeast so that could make artemisinin resulting in a low-cost quality product. It is now in production.

So what about sacred use? Smoke, from incense or smudging has be used around the world to cleanse spaces. Smudging was a Indian tradition before the Europeans arrived. But incense was used traditionally by the Europeans. Even Jesus got a gift of frankincense when he was born. I don't exactly see how smoke can clean anything.

And as far as intoxicating, some species are more used than others. It is supposed to make you feel calm and relaxed, like pot, but not so strong. It is also used for lucid dreaming and astral projection.

Both live plants and dried plant parts are available online.

(intoxicating, sacred, insect)

4.5 out of 5 stars

Cycads

It may look like a baby palm tree, but it is not. In areas where it grows, it has even been used instead of palm fronds on Palm Sunday. But a palm is a flowering plant, and cycads are gymnosperms, which are related to pines and do not flower. However, they do have seeds and pollen, and some species in this group may have been among the first plants pollinated by insects.  And, in regards to pollen, the pollen of some cycads has been used as a narcotic.

The group is old, and lived at the same time that butterflies were coming into existence and dinosaurs were dying out. Maybe the long lost cousins of this plant were eaten by a stegosaurus.

Cycads grow around the world, mostly in the southern hemisphere, although they are found naturally in Florida and Mexico. They are also native in South America, India, Africa, and Australia.

They also grow in the Philippines and in Guam, east of the Philippines. In those areas, as in many others, the starchy parts of the plant are used for food after the toxins are carefully leached out.

This worked well, and few people got sick. However, mysteriously, many people started to get sick in the 1940s. At the time, they didn't know the cause. But after some sleuthing, it was traced back to the cycads.


During traditional feasts, the native Chamorro men ate bats boiled in milk. THE WHOLE THING: fur, bones, guts, all of it. They had done this for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. However, during WWII, a military base was established on Guam, which brought guns to a culture that had never had them before. As a result, they could kill more bats and eat more bats. It turns out that the bats were feasting on cycads, and accumulating the toxins in their body. Then when the men ate the bats, they ingested a super sized dose and got sick.

Thankfully, as the Chamorro started eating fewer bats, the incidence of the disease decreased.

(intoxicating plants)  (sacred plant)

Papaver somniferum

Poppies are famous for opium and muffins. Supposedly, the plants used for culinary purposes have a lot less of the psychoactive chemicals. But who knows? So many cultivars and varieties, it is hard to tell. When the seedheads are cut, the latex that flows is harvested and made into opium or other drugs.                         (Intoxicating Plant)

Desert Tea-----------Ephedra californica

(Las Pilitas Nursery Photo)

Ephedra californica is native to both California and Arizona. It was used by indigenous people to cleanse the blood and suppress appetite.

It is called Desert Tea or Jointfir. Can you see the joints in the photo above?

Many species of Ephedra grow around the world. One of the most famous is Ephedra sinica, also known as Ma Huang. It has been used in Chinese tradition medicine for 2,000 years. Many ephedras, including this one, contain epinephrine and pseudo-epinephrine. They shrink swollen tissue, relieving nasal congestion. They are also stimulants that increase the heart rate, sometimes enough to cause cardiac arrest or stroke. In the early 1900s, Nagai Nagoyoshi created methamphetamine from E. sinica. It was subsequently given to soldiers to keep them awake and keep them fighting. Not just Japanese soldiers, but also American, German and British soldiers.

You can't buy meth legally, but you can buy pseudo epinephrine; the brand name is Sudafed. But the sale is now closely monitored because too many people were using it to cook meth.


(Intoxicating Plants)

Ergot

Do you see the brown things sticking out of the brown seedhead on the right? That is ergot, a fungus that grows on rye grass. The history of ergot in regards to humans is deep and wide and has both positive and negative elements. It has caused death and disease, has been used as an intoxicant, and has provided a source for chemicals to treat migraine. It is both hated and revered.


Illustration from Medical Botany (1836) by John Stephenson and
James Morss Churchhill. Reproduction thanks to Rawpixel.


Ergot, among other things, constricts blood vessels. This means that it can be used to reduce the pain of migraine and reduce hemorrhaging after childbirth. But it also means that it can cause hands and feet to dry up and fall off.  This is called gangrenous egotism.

Ergot grows on rye when the weather is moist. So a staple in the diet becomes poisonous. Hundreds of years before Christ was born, ergotism was mentioned in an Assyrian tablet. Sickness from this fungus was rather too common in the middle ages. Thousands of people died.

It also causes people to feel hot, dance, writhe, and hallucinate. Visions of flying are especially common. Wise pagan women (who later became known as Witches by christians who feared powerful women) used ergot to help women survive childbirth and to help themselves have magical experiences. They smeared magic wands with ergot and applied the fungus to mucus membranes, where it could be absorbed while causing little harm. The wands were disguised as brooms with twigs and straw at one end. That is why Witches always have brooms. Witches are old because it takes time to become wise. They have warts because any imperfection would cause christians to accuse a woman of being a witch. The green skin? That is the result of a portrayal in The Wizard of Oz.

LSD was developed from ergot by Afred Hoffmann at the Swiss company Sandoz. It is not a legal drug. Except Dr Peter Gasser, a Swiss psychiatrist, is using it to help people deal with terminal illness.

Another drug derived from ergot is ergotamine. This is a legal prescription drug used to treat migraine. It has been in used to treat headaches since 1925 and is still available today. Since it is chemically related to neurotransmitters and and causes visions, it is not surprising that it can help with a pain in the head. So maybe it works by working on the blood vessels and on the neurons.

(Rx, sacred plant, poisonous plant, intoxicating plant)

Pacific Yew--Taxus Brevifolia

Pacific Yew is an evergreen tree native to the Pacific Northwest. It is famous as the source of Taxol, one of the most effective cancer treatments found in the last fifty years. Its discovery came after many hiccups and false starts, and my summary will make it all look very simple, which it wasn't.

In the 1950s, the National Cancer Institute was screening every synthetic chemical it could get its hands on for anti-tumor activity. In 1960, it started in on natural products. Since they needed an accurate identification to make sure that it knew where the substances were coming from, they turned to USDA botanists. They tested 30,000 samples per year. In 1962, Arthur Barclay collected samples from the Pacific Yew and submitted them to the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina. Dr Susan Brand Horwitz delineated its mode of action: it encouraged development to such a degree that cell division became uncoordinated and cells died.

It was selected for clinical trials in 1977. However, the trials were delayed for years due to the difficulty of extracting enough Taxol. It is in very low concentrations in the yew, and the highest concentration is found in the bark. When the bark is harvested, the trees die. Since the bark is only 1/8" thick, to treat one patient for one year, several trees were needed.

Environmentalists complained. They pointed out that the slow-growing yews would be decimated withing a few years in order to treat all the people who would want it. In addition, the yew was the habitat of the Northern Spotted Owl.

Scientists looked for another source of Taxol. They were unable to find one. However, they did find a tree with a precursor to Taxol. Not only was a  taxane present in the European Yew, there were reasonable concentrations in the leaves, so that the tree did not need to be sacrificed to extract the chemical. In addition, yews are grown as hedges in Europe, so that trimmings were regularly available.

Synthesizing Taxol from European Yew worked well for awhile. But now it can be made in the lab from plant cell cultures. The yews of the Pacific Northwest were saved by the ingenuity of scientists working together.

It is used to treat breast, lung and ovarian cancer as well as Karposi's Sarcoma. It is one of the most potent chemotherapy agents ever discovered. Yay, trees!

(Rx)

European Yew--Taxus Baccata

 The European Yew has a deep and wide history all over Europe. The British made bows from the strong flexible wood. The Druids used it to make magic wands. It was commonly used in musical instruments such as lutes and primitive flutes. Since it lived thousands of years and sprouted when drooping branches touched the soil, it was revered as a symbol of reincarnation by the pagans and Resurrection by the Christians.  Since it was used to make weapons, even in ancient times, it was sacred to Hecate, the Greek Goddess of death and the underworld.

It is perhaps the most poisonous plant in Europe and all parts except fleshy covering of the seed are toxic. Yew residue was found on spear points from 50,000 years ago. Ancient Celts use the sap on arrowheads and for ritual suicide. Even Shakespeare mentioned it in a witches brew in Macbeth.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

                                                                Liver of blaspheming Jew,
                                                                Gall of goat, and slips of yew

                                                               

The UC Botanical Garden calls this an English Yew, but it occurs all over Europe, so I like the name European Yew better. At any rate, it is closely related to the Pacific Yew, Taxus brevifolia, which grows in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Canada. Slowly. It grows very slowly. The European Yew also grows slowly, but it is very adaptable (any soil, sun or shade) and has been planted in gardens and parks for hundreds of years. Whereas the Pacific Yew grows sparsely on public lands such as national parks and forests. One use of the European Yew has become particularly important in recent years. It has been planted as a hedge in many areas. This means that it is trimmed regularly, and since the precursor to the cancer drug Taxol occurs in the leaves, it can be used to synthesize the drug without harming the plant. In contrast, the drug only occurs in the bark of the Pacific Yew, and at least three trees had to be destroyed to treat one patient for a year. That didn't sit well with environmentalists.

Yews are sacred, planted in churchyards throughout Britain. However, since the trees are older than the churches, they were probably used by Druids by a sacred grove before christians appropriated the space and crushed their practices. Christians believe that the poisons in the yew protect the dead. So not only are they common in the graveyard, branches are actually buried with the dead.

For the solstice, the Druids decorated evergreens with symbols of hopes for the coming year: fruits for a good harvest, love charms for a new relationship, nuts for fertility and coins for wealth. This was the precursor to the evergreens we put in our homes in December in modern times.

Yews have been the source of one of the most potent cancer treatments found in the last fifty years. Yews can kill you, and they can cure you. We may not worship them or consider them sacred. but many people are thankful for the gifts of the yew.

(sacred plant. Rx)