Herba Cana - Northeastern Illinois University

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© 2004 by CRC Press 548 Florida Ethnobotany by that common name in English, French (café marron, Guadeloupe, Martinique), and Spanish in the Caribbean (café cimarrón, wild coffee, Dominican Republic), and Mexico (kapee ts’ohool, coffee herb, Huastec, San Luis Potosí). There is an indirect reference to the place of coffee origin in Africa with palo moro (Moorish tree, Puerto Rico). Although Psychotria is compared with coffee, it is not used as a beverage. Several people have told me they tried using Psychotria seeds as a substitute ‘‘coffee,’’ and got only bad taste and terrible headaches from the mixture. However, these plants are surely rich in tannins because mashed leaves are used as a hemostat in Cuba (Roig 1945) and Puerto Rico (Meléndez 1989). People in Barbados use a leaf decoction as a febrifuge, as a remedy for colds, and to treat stomach ailments. Leaves are combined with other plants as ‘‘bush tea’’ (Goodding 1940 /1942), which is used to treat a number of maladies. In keeping with their multiple common names, the Huastecs of Mexico have the most varied uses (Alcorn 1984). Like Barbadians, the Huastecs use it to treat respiratory problems, especially asthma. Other uses include application to local swellings, such as swollen feet, and erysipelas, sores, boils, tumors, and skin fungus. Does bois laitelle (milk trees, Haiti) mean they use it with milk? Before Coffea was introduced into the New World, people here used other names for the Psychotria. The only indigenous name from within Florida is for P. sulzneri. This hammock shrub is known by the Seminoles as atópâ:bî (dogwood replica, Mikasuki). According to Sturtevant’s (1955) informants, the plant was ‘‘useless.’’ However, that name was derived from Creek vtvphv [atápha] for dogwood (Cornus), and that comparison with another species suggests a loss of information (see Cornus). Every species of Cornus in North America was used by people of essentially every culture (Moerman 1998). Florida’s other ‘‘wild coffee’’ (Florida, Bahamas, Puerto Rico), P. nervosa, has a diversity of names outside the state. Among those names is ipecacuana ondulada mayor (big ipecacuanha with undulate leaves) in Cuba (Roig 1945). That name was given because the roots of P. nervosa were used as an emetic as were those in the real ipecacuanha (P. ipecacuanha). The comparison is instructive, because ipecacauanha has a long history. Between 1570 and 1600, the Portuguese priest Manoel Tristão was in Brazil where he learned that the Tupí people used the roots of a plant for treating dysentery. When he returned to Europe, he told more people about the plant, and French physicians finally made it available in 1672 (Burkill 1966). We get our English name ipecacuanha from the Tupí-speakers in South America who called their medicinal plant ipega’kwai (duck’s penis) or ipe-kaa-guéne (creeping plant causing vomiting). The Florida plants have no such imaginative names. The only name other than ‘‘wild coffee’’ found in Florida is Seminole balsamo, given by Morton (1981). Since she gives no source for the name and it has not been found elsewhere, the origin remains a mystery. There is documentation for the name bálsamo in Puerto Rico (Liogier and Martorell 1982, Meléndez 1989). Literally translated, the word means ‘‘balsam.’’ The probable sense of its use for ‘‘Seminole balsamo’’ is the now archaic meaning of ‘‘soothing.’’ Etymologically, the word in Spanish and English has been equivalent to ‘‘balm,’’ both having been derived from Latin balsamum. The very name itself suggests a long medical history*/unless Morton invented the name. Some of the other designations indicating use as a medicine are kidney bush (Caymans) and St. John’s bush (Barbados). While perhaps not exactly ‘‘medical,’’ the name strong back (Caymans) suggests enhanced stamina. Since the name implies two distinct applications of strength, it was perhaps an important plant. The interpretation most often given for such names is improved sexual stamina. However, there was an equally valuable application. Since our species became bipedal, we have suffered from innumerable back problems. In addition, as the name is endemic to the Virgin Islands where the population is largely derived from slaves, it takes on added meaning. Individuals who could not do their share of work during slaving times were not likely to survive long. Medicines to ‘‘soothe’’ aching backs would have been at a premium. Other names show different perspectives. The names penda (dangler, Dominican Republic) and tapa camino (path coverer, Cuba) are surely related to the locations where these shrubs grow and are descriptive of their life-forms. Plateado (folded or plaited, Cuba) is a literal equivalent of the specific name of the technical synonym Psychotria undata. That name was proposed by Nicolaus von Jacquin in his book of 1798, Plantarum Rariorum Horti Caesarei Schoenbrunnensis, and he too was taken with the undulating pattern of the living leaves. For some reason not understood, the plant is called huesito [husito] (little bone) in Panama. If that were an isolated case, it would be one thing, but that word is applied to several Mexican species. None of the uses suggests a bone medicine, so perhaps the name refers to the wood. Mayans call this shrub ya’ax-k’anan [anal, anal xiv, sacxanal, canaan] (ya’ax, green, k’anan, necessary, Yucatán), which is their same designation for Hamelia patens. Both plants are important in Mayan religious
© 2004 by CRC Press The Ethnobotany 549 ceremonies, and other people also have names with reverent implications. Although the plants are not mentioned in the recent book on Haitian voodoo (Beauvoir et al. 2001), the names cabra blanca (white goat, Dominican Republic) and cabra santa (holy goat, Dominican Republic) suggest involvement with that religion. It is locally well known that the Santarías, a Cuban religious group related to voodoo (Voeks 1997), leave both goat and chicken offerings to their deities on the steps of the Miami-Dade County courthouse. So, cabra santa carries special meaning, and a cabra blanca is the best offering. The most information available about the religious and medical importance of P. nervosa is among the Huastec (Alcorn 1984). There the shrub is wats’ul, a simple name denoting great age. Wats’ul also has a number of alternate names, including tsakam wats’ul (little wats’ul, Veracruz) and wach’ul ch’ohool (wach’ul herb, Veracruz), perhaps denoting a taxonomy that does not match ours. The names baina ts’ohool (sheath herb, San Luis Potosí), itsal kw’a’ (toad chile, San Luis Potosí), and tse’tsem ts’ohool (woodpecker herb, San Luis Potosí) may also imply religious significance. The name tsabalte’ ts’ohool (skin fungus herb, San Luis Potosí) points to a medicinal use, and the names tse’tsem t’abat’ (little Tabernaemontana alba, San Luis Potosí), and tsakam tsabalte’ (little Cestrum dumetorum, San Luis Potosí) compare it with other plants important among those people. People in Belize say it is contra yierba (herb against), which is the description often given to a strong plant used to counteract poisons, or at least some problem from an outside source. The genus Psychotria was named by Linnaeus because of the reputed medical properties of some species. Which species he knew about being medicinal is more of a problem, as there are perhaps 1650 in the genus (Hamilton 1989a,b,c, Nepokroeff et al. 1999). However, discoveries in the late 1960s led to a renewed interest in Psychotria. Studies among people in the Amazon revealed that one or more members of the genus were added to the psychoactive plant mixture called ayahuasca (vine of the soul, Quechua), used for religious, medicinal, and social purposes (Pinkley 1969, Schultes and Raffauf 1992). Subsequently, several studies of the genus have revealed alkaloids, benzoquinones, cyclic peptides, and other chemicals that exert a variety of influences on human physiology (e.g., Beretz et al. 1985, Adjibade et al. 1991, Amador et al. 2000, 2001, Khan et al. 2001, Verotta et al. 2002). None of the studies examined the Florida species, and the large genus is considered paraphyletic (Nepokroeff et al. 1999). Inferences of what might be the potential chemical bases for uses of P. nervosa or P. sulzneri are impossible, particularly because not all species contain the same classes of active compounds (Leal and Elisabetsky 1996). Still, the Huastec of Mexico use wats’ul as a love charm, and that is as good as any. You simply grind the seeds and carry them in a pocket. What could be easier? Ptelea (From ptao, to fly, the Greek name for the elm, reapplied by Linnaeus to this genus with a similar fruit; akin to Akkadian petelu, to wind, entwine) Ptelea trifoliata. From Sargent 1905. Ptelea trifoliata (three-leaved) ague bark (from the use to treat malaria) cola de zorillo (little skunk tail, Texas, Arizona, Sonora, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Veracruz); vara de zorro (fox bush, northern Mexico to Veracruz); zorillo (little skunk, Hidalgo; because plant and animals have a similar odor) dreiblättrige Lederbaum (three-leaf leather-tree, German, fide Millspaugh 1893); Lederstrauch (leather bush, German) [common, three-leaf, woolly] hop-tree [hoptree] (‘‘hop-tree’’ dates from ca. 1877, with the substitution of the fruits of Ptelea for those of hops, Humulus lupulus for making malt liquor, and as a tonic and soporific) orme de samaire à trois feuilles (samara elm with three leaves, French; fide Millspaugh 1892) pickaway[-anise] pinacatillo (comparing the smell with the pinacate beetle, Coahuila; from Náhuatl pinacatl, their name for the beetle Elodes spp., Tenebrionidae, a black insect that sprays an irritating, stinking chemical for defense) potato chip tree [potatochip-tree] (alluding to the flat fruits) prairie grub psehtin (Lakota) quinine-tree (a name comparing these shrubs with Cinchona spp., the source of the anti-malarial
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