Salvia divinorum
Diviner’s Sage, Hierba de la Pastora, Ska Pastora
An evergreen herbaceous perennial native to Oaxaca that grows to 3 ft in height. This member of the Mint family has a four-sided square stem, light green, lanceolate leaves that taper at both ends, and can be 8 in. long, covered entirely in fine hairs. Panicled (multi-branched) inflorescences are purple in color, though plants rarely flower and never produce viable seeds. S. divinorum is propagated through cuttings.
The most comprehensive overview of Salvia divinorum, a member of the mint family, was published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in 2013 by a team of researchers headed by Ivan Casselman.
Their article “concentrates on the investigation of Salvia divinorum over the last 50 years including ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, taxonomy, systematics, genetics, chemistry and pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic research.”
In the ethnobotanical section, the authors link traditional uses of the fresh leaves of this plant to Mazatec shamanism in Oaxaca, Mexico, where the plant is used as a palliative for patients near death. Similar approaches are being explored for more effective hospice care in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Men and women Mazatec healers undergo apprenticeship training with three plants: the leaves of Salvia divinorum, the seeds of Ipomoea violacea and Psilocybe spp. mushrooms.
“Initially,” say the authors, citing work published by Leander J. Valdés, “trainees ingest increasingly large doses of Salvia divinorum leaves which show them the way to heaven, where the initiated learn from the tree of knowledge.”
With regard to the chemistry of the plant, Casselman’s team of researchers confirms that “it is the diterpene salvinorin A that is responsible for the bioactivity in Salvia
opposite: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
Confocal image: 50 µm
above: Esthela Calderón collecting two leaves and a dried flower from a rare Bourreria huanita (Esquisúchil) inside the San Miguel Cathedral in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 2022.
right: Caption caption caption caption caption
right: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
in rituals. This is unfortunate; archaeologists have swept away a wealth of information on ancient plant use as they uncovered the stone, stucco, and dirt of ritual spaces.” The innovative and inspiring pollen analysis research conducted by McNeil indicates that “the white fragrant flowers of this tree were associated with the dead and used by the Mexica of highland Mexico as offerings in temples, in sacred gardens, as medicine, in cacao beverages, and as garlands to adorn individuals for sacred rites.” She goes on to characterize ancient use of this species in the following way: “Bourreria is also tied to blood in many of its medicinal uses, and the plant may have been used to heal the wounds of autosacrifice.” In addition, McNeil also asserts: “Current evidence indicates that Bourreria is the most important ritual flower of the Maya
to have been forgotten or lost in the time since the conquest.”
After receiving permission to do so, Esthela Calderón collected two leaves for the Microcosms project from a Bourreria huanita tree (one of perhaps two in all of Honduras) located in an inner patio in the San Miguel Cathedral in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. During her visit, she spoke to the people whose job it is to clean the enclosed area where this ancient Esquisúchil is protected. They told her that they won’t sweep the area in the very early hours at dawn during the months when the tree is in bloom because the intense fragrance of the flowers causes a kind of otherworldly lightheadedness. Thanks to conservationists, more of these threatened trees survive in Guatemala, especially in the cooler climate of Ciudad Antigua.
Caption caption caption
Solanaceae
Datura innoxia
Chamico, Toloache
An herbaceous annual that grows to 9 ft. The foliage of D. innoxia are dull green and hairy with serrated edges. The flowers are upright, white, and fragrant, and bloom at night with a 10-pointed corolla. Its pendant fruit is spherical, 2 in. in diameter, and covered with sharp spines; seeds are brownish-orange.
According to Peter T. Furst, “Datura toloache from the Nahuatl toloatzin, in Mexico and also in Indian California, was, and in many places still is, the ritual intoxicant of choice among native peoples of the Southwest and northwestern Mexico, including the Tepehuan.” Also called Mexican Thorn Apple, this plant was used by the Aztecs (Mexica) to reduce fever, by the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) to fortify fermented drinks, and by the Yaqui (Yoeme) to produce a visionary state.
This sacred plant is associated with numerous Indigenous myths. For example, the authors of Plants of the Gods, Schultes and Hofmann, recount the Zuñi Indian story about the divine origin of Datura in which a brother and sister knew too much about ghosts and the hidden things of the world and, consequently, offended the Divine Ones, who banished them forever. The Datura flowers appeared where the two descended into the earth. The blooms were exactly the same as the ones with which the brother and sister would adorn themselves on each side of their heads when they used to visit the outer world.
Now that it is possible to include a more ample selection of confocal microscope images, it is clear that some species really seem more “photogenic” than others. Datura really is a star, perhaps attributable in part to the fact that it was growing in Becky Harblin’s garden in upstate New York and was not one of the species that had to be transported from afar. A fresher specimen would not be possible! Especially notable
opposite: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
Confocal image: 50 µm
Ayahuasca / Yagé
the combination of:
Malpighiaceae
Banisteriopsis spp.
Ayahuasca, Hoasca, Jagube, Yagé, Miiyabu, Red Ayahuasca
A giant tropical liana with ovate-lanceolate leaves up to 7 in. long, 3 in. wide, ending in an elongated point. Its multi-flowered pink inflorescence, or flower head, has four umbrels. Banisteriopsis caapi flowers in January, and winged samara fruit appears between March and August.
Malpighiaceae
Diplopterys
spp.
Chagropanga, Chaliponga, Huambisa
Described by Christian Rätsch as a very long vine with opposite leaves that are oblong-oval and retuse-attenuate in shape, Diplopterys cabrerana very rarely flowers and is easily confused with Banisteriopsis caapi. It prefers the wet tropical biome of the Amazon basin.
Rubiaceae
Psychotria
spp.
Amyruca, Chacruna, Kawa
P. carthagenensis is hard to distinguish from P. viridis, except when it flowers. Eating or even handling the red fruit to harvest seeds produces altered perceptions of long duration. It is used by Lamista traditional healers in Peru as an ayahuasca admixture plant.
Malvaceae
Ceiba pentandra
Ceiba, Kapok, Lupuna, Samaúma, Silk Cotton Tree, Wari mahi, Yax che-el cab
A giant of the rainforests, this fast-growing deciduous tropical tree can reach an astonishing height of 230ft. It produces an abundance of seeds attached to silky, water-resistant fibers. It has many uses for humans, from its lightweight wood and fibres to its seed oils. The Maya revered this scared tree as “The Tree of Life”, believing it connected the heavens, earth, and the underworld.
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, Nicaragua all the way back to wintry Canton, NY and the confocal microscope at St. Lawrence University where Jill Pflugheber was poised for action. We were all ecstatic with the botanical forms (particularly the stomata and trichomes), colours, juxtapositions, and evident raw power of this towering tree in no way diminished by the microscope and the hum of electrical current, this sacred emblem of protection, Axis Mundi, joiner of earth and sky, revealed at last in these images.
No one has written a more beautiful ethnobotanical portrait of a Ceiba than Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002), my literary mentor for decades. The poem, which I translated with Greg Simon, is one of my absolute favorites by Cuadra, and comes from the extraordinary book Seven Trees Against the Dying Light. Overleaf is a fragment from “The Ceiba Tree.”
Writing about Upper Amazonian shamanism in Peru, Françoise Barbira Freedman says that tobacco is offered as a propitiating food to the mother-spirits of certain trees, particularly the lupuna tree (Ceiba spp.): “The lupuna sap is indeed known to be poisonous as well as psychoactive.” I have written more about these properties of the
His insights and social activism are enhanced through his lifelong relationship with yãkoana (Virola theidora, from the Nutmeg family), a powerful visionary snuff made from the resin of the great tree’s bark.
He says, “I defend the forest because I know it thanks to the power of yãkoana.”
He goes on to say: “If we do not feed the spirits with the yãkoana, they sleep in silence and our thought remains closed.”
A team of Brazilian scientists headed by Inês Ribeiro Machado published an overview in 2021 of Virola surinamensis, a closely-related species to Virola theiodora in which they summarize research related to the plant’s medical, therapeutic and pharmacological properties as antimicrobial, larvicidal, antitumor, antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, leishmanicidal, antimalarial, cercaricidal, trypanocidal, gastroprotective and antiulcerogenic. In a section on traditional medicinal uses of Virola, the authors mention that the Waiãpi Indians of Amapá inhale the vapor of the plant’s leaves as a treatment for malaria. V surinamensis is also used as an insect repellent, for the healing of wounds and also for “inflammation of the digestive, urinary, and reproductive systems.” Known as ucuuba, Virola surinamensis’s seeds and bark are used by different ethnic groups as hallucinogens in their rituals. Ucuuba seeds are also of interest in the cosmetics industry.
top: Caption caption caption caption caption above: Caption caption caption caption caption opposite: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption overleaf left: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption overleaf right: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
Confocal image: 50 µm
Poaceae
Dianthera pectoralis
Carpenter’s Bush, Chambá, Chapantye, Mashi Hiri
An helophyte that grows in the seasonally dry tropical biome. Dianthera pectoralis has vertical stalks that can grow up to 3 ft in height, thick, light green leaves that are narrow and lanceolate, and abundant, small, light-purple flowers that have a reddish center with an intricate pattern of white lines and develop at the tips of the stalks. Its seeds are flat and reddish brown. The leaves contain coumarins which give them a pleasant fragrance.
The Yanomami use the shade-dried leaves of Dianthera pectoralis as an additive to psychoactive Virola snuffs. The microcosmic world revealed by this unassuming plant that grows throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America with a wide variety of common names is shockingly complex and beautiful. It has a plethora of medicinal uses that include alleviating prostate problems, coughs and colds, skin rashes, diabetes, menstrual pains, menopause, epilepsy, and respiratory tract disorders. Due to the presence of coumarin, the leaves of Dianthera pectoralis have a sweet smell. Recent phytochemical research conducted by Luzia Kalyne Almeida Moreira Leal et al found that the plant “has therapeutic potential for the treatment of inflammatory diseases such as asthma.”
A team of Brazilian researchers led by Thays Lima Fama Guimarães studied Dianthera pectoralis for the journal Food Chemistry Advances in 2023 and concluded that this plant, known as chambá in Brazil, “demonstrated great potential, presenting a composition rich in phenolics, especially umbelliferone, presenting a higher antioxidant activity and antimicrobial action, which was visualised by its minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations on important foodborne bacteria.”
opposite: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
Confocal image: 50 µm
Labiatae
Leonotis nepetifolia
Christmas Candlestick, Klipp Dagga, Lion’s Ear
An annual or perennial upright herb that grows up to 9 ft tall in seasonally dry tropical. Although native to Africa and India, L. nepetifolia has been widely introduced into Latin America and the Caribbean. Its leaves are ovate, with toothed margins and pointed tips. The distinctively-lipped flowers of this plant are tubular, orange, and hairy, and emerge in whorls from green spheres interspersed on the stem like large beads or knots in a cord.
Leonotis nepetifolia, although originally from Africa, where its common name is Klipp Dagga, has been naturalised, and can be found throughout the Caribbean and the Americas as well as the Indian subcontinent, where there are more than a dozen common names corresponding to the linguistic diversity of this region, including Lion’s Ear. As its square stem would suggest, it belongs to the mint family (Labiatea). Sometimes considered an exotic invasive species, more often it is a highly-revered plant with many therapeutic applications and sacred connotations, especially among Indigenous groups such as the Cora (Náyari) (Mexico) and the Guaraní (Paraguay).
In Trinidad, it is called Shandilay, and is an important folk medicine used to relieve fevers and coughs, as well as the symptoms of diabetes and asthma.
In Spanish-speaking countries, common names include Flor de Mundo (World Flower) and Mota, a moniker that points to the use of its dried leaves and flowers smoked as a marijuana substitute. We are pleased to be able to include confocal images of the flowers with their remarkable juxtapositions of textures around pollen grains as well as some of the most aesthetically-complex visualisations of trichomes of any plants we have been able to include. The markedly long, thin, straight stem of Leonotis nepetifolia has earned the plant names in Spanish associated with walking sticks, canes, and rods that are symbols of religious power: Bastón de San Francisco, Vara de San José
opposite: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
Confocal image: 50 µm
above: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
opposite: Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption
Confocal image: 250 µm
to document one of her ceremonies in which she chanted and healed the sick after ingesting the divine mushrooms. He published articles with dramatic photographs about his profound experiences in Life and Life en Español.
Three years later, he recorded one of María Sabina’s veladas (nocturnal vigils) in its entirety. The publicity resulted in a destructive onslaught of foreign “seekers of God”. María Sabina later told an interviewer: “From the moment the foreigners arrived, the saint children lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on, they won’t be any good. There’s no remedy for it.” In a retrospective essay from 1976, Wasson laments being “held responsible for the end of a religious practice in Mesoamerica that goes back far, for millennia.” “I fear,” he continues, “she spoke the truth, exemplifying her wisdom. A practice carried on in secret for centuries has now been aerated and aeration spells the end.”
In How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Michael Pollan describes taking some potent Psilocybe azurescens mushrooms that he found in the Pacific Northwest with the guidance of Paul Stamets, a leading expert on psilocybin species: “Dusk now approaching, the air traffic in the garden had built to a riotous crescendo: the pollinators making their last rounds of the day, the plants still signifying to them with their flowers: me, me, me!
motivate people to take action.”
Paul Stamets is collaborating with Giuliana Furci, the Founder and CEO of the Fungi Foundation on an important project called Historias y Memorias Mazatecas, which seeks to preserve the cultural heritage of the Mazatec people. Thus far, over the last two years, work has focused successfully on conserving and restoring historical artifacts and textiles as well as videos and photographs of leading Mazatec healers, including María Sabina. A secure, climate-controlled space has been constructed to protect the contents of the archive which was built over a lifetime by Renato García Dorantes. The collection is now curated by his son, Inti García Flores, a Mazatec historian and secondary school teacher in San Mateo Yoloxochitlán. Future plans, for which fundraising efforts are well underway, include the construction of a museum (and cultural center) so that these materials and this new space can benefit the Mazatec community. More information about the Historias y Memorias Mazatecas ethnomycological project and how to support it can be found in the bibliography.
“Sometimes they mix tara yagé, wa´i yagé and pehí so that the result is very concentrated. When you drink it, the drunkenness hits you before you finish the gourd.
--Fernando Payaguaje, The Yagé Drinker
The Fungi Foundation has been instrumental in promoting what it calls the FFF Initiative, which, according to the website, “elevates fungi’s conservation status by advocating for their inclusion in international laws and policies, promoting the term Funga alongside Flora and Fauna.” It also seeks to ally its work with the global Rights of Nature movement.
In one way I knew this scene well – the garden coming briefly back to life after the heat of a summer day has relented – but never had I felt so integral to it. I was no longer the alienated human observer, gazing at the garden from a distance, whether literal or figural, but rather felt part and parcel of all that was transpiring here.”
Stamets himself places these same ideas into a global environmental context: “Psilocybin mushrooms carry with them a message from nature about the health of the planet. At a time of planetary crisis brought on by human abuse, the Earth calls out through these mushrooms – sacraments that lead directly to a deeper ecological consciousness and
To this end, the Fungi Foundation emphasises Indigenous cosmovisions and ancestral relationships to Nature and understands Indigenous people as stewards of the genetics as well as the knowledge associated with medicinal plants and fungi. In an interview with Dennis McKenna on the Brainforest Café podcast series, Furci discusses how giving legal beinghood to mushrooms can accelerate habitat protection in that mushrooms are specific to their host symbionts. She reminds listeners that, unlike plants and animals, fungi cannot be removed from a particular habitat. A team of researchers headed by Sara de la Salle from the Department of Psychiatry at Montréal’s McGill University and Hannes Kettner from the Centre for Psychedelic Research
at Imperial College London published an article in Scientific Reports in 2024 analyzing the results of the pioneering work being done in Canada with regard to the use of psilocybin to treat anxiodepressive symptoms in patients with life-threatening illnesses. Legal pathways to obtaining access to “magic mushrooms” on the grounds of compassion began in 2020 and has reached perhaps 100 Canadian patients. The researchers “conducted a prospective longitudinal survey which focused on Canadians who were granted Section 56
opposite: Caption caption caption
opposite: Caption caption caption
