The Big, Bad Book of Botany Page 3
The plant grows as a thick, woody stem and a twisting ropy vine in the Amazon Basin of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil, clinging to trees and attempting to find pockets of sunlight through the dense foliage. Its oval leaves with pointed ends are about 10 inches long. It blooms flowers of both white and pink petals at irregular intervals. The vine itself can reach 100 feet or more in length. It belongs to the Malpighiaceae family of plants, which has approximately 1,300 species, all of which are found in tropical and subtropical climates.
How a Hallucinogen Might Help
Plants, like all life on earth, evolved methods to aid survival and propagation. Some entice with sweet nectar, or grow thorns to keep attackers away. Many, however, either by chance or on purpose—a question no botanist can fully answer—have evolved an internal composition that, if consumed, causes animals to hallucinate. This adaptation may have developed totally by chance as a by-product of some other favorable mutation or survival mechanism. Mushrooms and cacti are other examples of plants with similar properties. How the plant could “know” it would have this effect on animals was surely unclear at first and obviously involved a long process of trial and error.
How does ayahuasca’s unique bio-arsenal benefit the plant? In some cases, this defense method might cause animals that ate the plant to lose their sense of purpose and wander away before destroying it more. As for enhancing disbursement, animals, and early humanoids in particular, found the hallucinogenic properties appealing and might thus have protected and cultivated the plant. A significant number of archeological findings indicate early humans frequently sought flora with psychedelic properties; even Neanderthals added hallucinogenic flowers to their burial sites. Another benefit may be the chemicals’ effect on insects, the primary enemy of early and modern-day plant life. It is not uncommon to find plants that have developed compounds, like DMT, effective in fending off harmful pests.
The intoxicating qualities of many plants have worked wonders for their survival. For example, for numerous berry-bearing plants, if the fruit was not dispersed and instead was allowed to ferment on the vine, more birds were attracted. Robins, among other birds, have been known to seek out and gorge themselves on fermented blackberries or juniper berries, which results in their flying into trees or smashing into windows. From the plant’s perspective, this is a brilliant way to get its seeds dispersed. If the bird dies, all the better, since the seeds in the belly will have even more fertilizer to germinate in as the avian’s carcass decays.
In the case of ayahuasca, its chemical composition ultimately proved a boon. Today the plant is treated like gold; travelers seeking psychedelic experiences have engendered a booming tourism industry in the regions where it grows.
BAD WOMAN
Cnidoscolus angustidens
Bites like a Cobra
This nettle plant, nicknamed mala mujer, or bad woman, by the Spanish, is dangerous to the touch, but like most nettles, its chemistry holds some very beneficial qualities. Nettles, also sometimes called laurels, are grouped in the family known as Urticaceae, which has 45 genera of shrubs, trees, herbs, and vines. Most of these feature stinging hairs on their stems and leaves. Nettles grow all over the world, with the exception of the Arctic, Antarctica, and South Africa. The scientific name for nettle derives from the Latin uro, meaning “to burn.” Nettle, in English, comes from the Anglo-Saxon word naedl, meaning “needle.” The mala mujer exists in the highlands of the American Southwest and has one of the deadlier bites in the family. A mere touch of its spiky hairs causes a stinging sensation, as if one has been bitten by a snake, and the pain can last for hours. The relentless itchy rash it leaves will persist for days, giving way to months of purplish, discolored skin near the site of the sting.
Stinging nettles have hairs that, when touched, come loose and act as mini hypodermic needles. These hairs contain a concoction of chemicals, including the catalyst serotonin, bicarbonate of ammonia, acetylcholine (which affects the nervous system), leukotriene (an immune response compound), histamine, and folic acid, to name a few. The combination produces a toxic pool, visible as a small white dot at the base of the hair. Upon contact with a predator, the mixture shoots up through the hollowed center of these specialized defensive hairs, much like the way venom travels through the biting fangs of poisonous snakes.
However, early civilizations were not easily persuaded into avoiding the plant. Many pagan cultures, for example, believed there was a spirit in every living thing (including plants), and so the nettle’s sting was a way for the plant to dissuade those unworthy of its secrets.
In fact, some early civilizations used the needles’ secretions as a remedy to alleviate the more painful effects of arthritis and rheumatism. In medieval times, people prepared the nettle as a drink, purportedly to rid the body of excess water; they would also grind the plant into a paste to treat joint pain. Centuries before the introduction of hemp and cotton, people used the strong fibers in the plant’s stems, reportedly as soft as silk, to make garments.
Stinging nettles are perennials and grow in size from 2 to 6 feet. Today the plant has many purposes, from green dyes producible from its chlorophyll, to herbal supplements meant to aid the immune, urinary, respiratory, and circulatory systems. This latter use taps into the secret the bad woman and other nettles seem to guard with their caustic hairs—a rich internal mix of health-stimulating vitamins, including A, B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), B5 (pantothenic acid), C, D, K, E, potassium, calcium, manganese, acetylcholine, serotonin, sulfur, iron, selenium, magnesium, chromium, and zinc.
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Mythology around the prickly nettle plant abounds. The Vikings believed nettles were especially important to the god Thor, and that burning one in a fire could prevent lightning strikes. Germanic cultures used nettles in medicinal rituals, believing that sickness could be cured by grabbing the plant by the roots and waving it over a patient while reciting his (and his parents’) names. According to Greek mythology, these stinging plants arose after a watchful father transformed his beautiful daughter into a prickly plant to prevent the god Apollo from seducing her.
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A Formula for Magic
Medieval Europe was a hotbed for death by poisoning. It was the most popular form of stealth murder in the period, aided in popularity and ease by the proliferation of apothecaries, which made many poisons available, including deadly herb extracts. This was also a time when many gravitated toward a belief in magic and mysticism. Such was the influence of the occult that people often presented themselves as sorcerers, magicians, spiritualists, and healers, all boasting a wide spectrum of “magical plants.” Birch, hawthorn, elder, and hazel were among the most prevalent. Poplar, for example, was useful if you wanted to fly; linden would make you immortal, while lovage would provide you with prophetic abilities. Rowan would allow you to see the future, one of many plants to which magicians ascribed psychic powers, along with wormwood, yarrow, rose, borage, peppermint, flax, elecampane, and many, many more, including, of course, the nettles.
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BAMBOO
Bambusa oldhamii
The Grass of Giants
The distant ancestors of bamboo evolved from the early grass family of wheat, barley, and rice, and scientists still classify modern bamboo in the Poaceae family of true grasses. Bamboo developed into its own genera about forty-five million years ago, giving rise to as many as 14,500 different bamboo species, from nonwoody types to what we call Old World woody bamboo, the variety with which we are most familiar. Though we primarily associate bamboo with tropical climates, some species are hardy enough to withstand freezing temperatures. The giant bamboo of China, which grows to 60 feet, is actually the tallest grass in the world. Many species have incredibly long life spans of hundreds of years, and have served as an important aspect of religious symbolism in many cultures. Additionally, bamboo is still a plant of great commercial value to this day, used primarily as timber.
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bsp; Unlike trees that start as tender seedlings, the stalks or stems of the bamboo, called culms, break from the ground at their birth, or germination, with a wide diameter. It’s the fastest-growing species in the plant world; some are able to increase their height by more than 3 feet within twenty-four hours. Bamboos are perennials and never shed all their leaves at once. They are also a flowering plant, but their blooming cycle is atypically long and irregular. Most bamboo will bloom only at intervals of 65 or 120 years. When they do produce flowers (as well as a massive amount of seeds), bamboo can cause a sort of ecological havoc. Rats become suddenly abundant, and cities or towns close to native bamboo forests become overrun with rodents and, as a result, disease. Scientists are still at a loss to explain this strange pattern of blooming. Some hypothesize that the evolution of such abundant seed dispersal was directly related to rodents—although the extra seeds may cause a sudden boom in rat populations, the rats are hardly ever able to eat all of the seeds. The bamboo only flowers again when time has thinned out the rat population, ensuring that the seeds retain a good chance of germinating. The only “enemies” of the bamboo are pandas of China, which eat its leaves; lemurs that favor Madagascan bamboo; and gorillas and chimpanzees in Rwanda and Uganda. The primates both enjoy the bamboo species of their regions as a good food source, and even break off the stalks to let the sap ferment into a special alcoholic cocktail.
Giant bamboo (Bambusa oldhamii) and its close Asian relatives originated in Taiwan and produce a very strong wood. Used to build structures in the South Pacific, South America, Asia, and even parts of Australia, bamboo is even strong enough to hold up small suspension bridges that have survived for decades. Builders still use it for scaffolding while erecting skyscrapers in Hong Kong, and it supports the weight of numerous workers and building materials. In addition to its strong composite fiber, bamboo has featured in the best longbows, spears, and all sorts of weapons throughout history. In fact, the first “rifle” was made of bamboo. The Chinese, as early as the tenth century, placed gunpowder in a hollowed bamboo stalk, allowing them to fire rock projectiles with considerable accuracy.
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Bamboo Symbolism
In China, bamboo is a symbol of longevity, while in India a gift of a potted stalk is a sign of friendship. Depending on the number of stalks, the gift can mean different things: a whole cluster in a pot brings a healthy and prosperous life; only two stalks symbolizes love and a way to double your luck; three stalks gives long life, happiness, and wealth. However, in Chinese culture, four bring bad fortune and negative energy.
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BE-STILL TREE
Thevetia peruviana
A Warning in a Name
Oleanders are beautiful bushes. Their lance-shaped, dark green leaves have a waxy finish, and when in bloom the plants have large, whorled pink, white, red, and yellow flowers, which smell similar to apricots. The plant originated in the Mediterranean region, and because it grows quickly in a burst of color, early settlers transported it around the world to beautify and give “hostile” lands what they considered a civilized look. Oleanders thrive primarily in warmer climates, and are often found growing in vacant lots in California and Florida. Some varieties can survive the summers of slightly cooler regions and are used frequently by gardeners and landscapers to add a quick-growing burst of color.
Be-still tree and lucky nut are common names of a few oleander species, but each is extremely deadly. Just a nibble of a few of its leaves, or just a sampling of its black nuts, can cause vomiting and quite often a rapid death. Oleanders contain a chemical classified as a cardiac glycoside. These deadly chemicals affect the heart, causing wildly erratic beats and irregular constrictions and contractions; the human nervous system begins freaking out, as it were, which quickly proves fatal unless vomiting is induced or a stomach pump is employed within minutes. Oleander ranks in the top five ornamental plants that cause fatalities. Ancient societies were well aware of its fast-acting poison, and because even a small amount can be deadly, it was often the food additive of choice for would-be assassins.
A Deadly Trend
Though it’s important to be aware of plants and their more dangerous qualities, sometimes informing the public can bring unintended consequences. In Sri Lanka, for example, a television program designed to raise awareness of the oleander’s poisonous nature led to a string of suicides among young women in 2006; from just 2 the number jumped to nearly 200 in only three years. Among the elderly, the more botanically savvy have been known to select the oleander to be part of their exit plan, since the lovely plant adorns the grounds of many nursing homes. Hence the nickname “be-still” for this swift killer.
Oleanders’ toxins are in all parts of the plant, such that a few leaves that might fall into a dog’s water bowl are enough to kill the animal. Even campfires mistakenly built from oleander wood can cause deadly fumes, and urban legends tell of a whole troop of scouts who died, or fell seriously ill, after using the sticks of oleander to roast hot dogs. Oleander nectar gathered by bees and transformed into honey also contains toxins. Just 100 grams of any part of the plant could cause a horse to keel over within minutes.
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In Christian mythology, the oleander was understood to be a nonflowering bush that miraculously bloomed flowers after the archangel Gabriel announced the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception. In Tuscany the oleander is still called St. Joseph’s staff.
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BEECH
Fagus grandifolia
Copy Paper
There are seven types of beech trees found in Europe, North America, and Asia, and all are deciduous, meaning they lose their leaves in winter. Beeches produce a hairy, spiky nut casing, which contains one to a half dozen edible seeds, though they’re quite bitter if consumed raw. The leaves have softly pointed tips running their entire length. Beech bark is a grayish silver color, and soft, and thus often provides a forestry blackboard of sorts for lovers, who etch their names in hearts on the bark, and for trappers, who will often leave notes in the bark, either with directions or merely to tag the site. As such beech bark was the world’s first canvas for graffiti artists; in fact, the word beech derives from the German buch, meaning “book,” as the tree’s bark was often used as a writing parchment in Europe prior to the invention of paper.
Some beech trees can grow as tall as 90 feet and have a 4-foot diameter. They are magnificent-looking trees, and their wide-spreading branches grow in the shape of a crown. Their wrinkly bark is often mistaken for old skin, faces, or other anthropomorphic features, giving these trees an eerie quality, particularly at night. Some even call them “ghost trees,” since they so often appear in spooky stories. The most outlandish tales claim that beech trees actually talk when the moon is full.
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Talking Trees?
The idea of plants communicating with humans and other plants isn’t exactly new (there are many urban legends), but the notion of a kind of botanical telepathy has gained such traction with certain scientists that a new field—psychobotany—has even begun to take shape. Some early theories suggest that plants substitute a kind of biosynthesis for standard, observable communication. Psychobotanists are currently investigating whether plants are able to employ a kind of biochemical messaging to interact with their environment on a level not yet intelligible to human beings.
Beech wood has a few commercial uses, particularly for flooring, but loggers consider it worthless. Many commercial lumber enterprises develop their acreage by ridding the land of beech trees, saying their wood is good for firewood and nothing more. That said, hollowed-out beech trees provide abundant habitat for wildlife and a bountiful supply of nuts for numerous animals. Some American beech trees, if left undisturbed, have lived for three hundred years.
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BEER PLANT
Humulus lupulus
Buds and Suds
Ale has long been a staple of our diet. Abundant archeological evidence proves that the bee
r-making enterprise goes back at least seven thousand years. Fermenting vases, barrels, recipes, and mugs and drinking vessels date to pre-Sumerian times, show up in Mesopotamian and Egyptian writings, and have been discovered in both Neolithic Europe and Asia. Past civilizations tried to ferment all kinds of plants into ale but found that the natural sugars in many species of grasses, particularly wheat and barley, produced the best-tasting and most potent lagers. Indeed, much of the human race’s first attempts at complex problem-solving and biological engineering centered around making the best beer. It was a matter of such importance that certain early societies even worshipped gods and goddesses of brewing. At times in history, fermented beverages have been safer to drink than the water supply; although water usually looks clear, it’s impossible to guess at the bacteria within. Ale was the favored drink of many civilizations throughout the centuries, and consumed by all age groups. Even babies and toddlers drank it on a daily basis.
The first ales were primarily made from grain, water, and yeast. Ale engineers solved the problem of how to get enzymes out of the grain’s sugar, found in its seeds, by mashing and boiling the grain at a particular temperature and then allowing yeast to transform it. Yeast, classified as a single-cell fungus, interacts with the grains through an anaerobic process (meaning it doesn’t use oxygen) in order to ferment the grain’s sugars into alcohol. In clusters, yeast looks like a mold, as on old bread. Ancient brewers thought the appearance of yeast on barley, rye, or wheat after harvesting was a miracle, and though they didn’t know what it was, they knew ale couldn’t be made without it. It wasn’t until 1866 that Louis Pasteur demonstrated that yeast was the primary cause of beer fermentation.