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South Hills Family Medicine

In 1857 the French poet Charles Baudelaire published a collection of poems entitled The Flowers of Evil. Being a botanist, I once searched through the volume, curious as to which flowers he had in mind. I should have realized that poets don't mean things so literally. Had Baudelaire needed to single out a bloom whose beauty was coupled with malevolence, however, I would have offered him a flowering branch of Brugmansia, the angel's-trumpet of South America. This tree's flowers are among the largest and most sumptuous in the plant kingdom, while the stems, leaves, and roots contain narcotic and hallucinogenic compounds that alter the behavior of mind and body. Dozens of indigenous peoples in South America have used these plants in ways medicinal, ritualistic, and, in some instances, criminal.

Brugmansia is a genus of small trees and shrubs in the nightshade family, the Solanaceae (which includes potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants as well as tobacco and many ornamental genera). The majority of its five or six species are native to the hills and mountains of the Andean countries, but one, B. suaveolens, is found in parts of coastal Brazil. I have seen Brugmansia resplendent with pendent tubular or trumpet-shaped blossoms, some measuring twenty inches from stem to tip, and can think of no other tree that has such a large proportion of its output diverted to floral flag-waving. The blooms have an almost fleshy texture, and the color may be ocher, ivory, soft pink, yellow, or even, in the species B. sanguinea, a combination of blood red and canary yellow. One feels compelled to fondle the flowers and inhale the complex perfume that wafts from the long trumpets. No wonder some native trailblazer was drawn to sample the taste of the plant; what an interesting meal that must have made.

Most potent among Brugmansia's chemicals is the alkaloid scopolamine, formerly used during childbirth for its amnesia-inducing properties. In low doses, it can prevent motion sickness and is one of the ingredients of an antinausea medicine given to astronauts during weightlessness training. Overdosing may lead to delusions, hallucinations, and sometimes death. A modest dose of atropine, another alkaloidal compound found within Brugmansia, acts as an antidote to pesticide and nerve-gas poisoning, but an overdose can cause delirium, convulsions, and coma. This is definitely not a plant to be used by the self-medicating.

Although the narcotic and hallucinogenic properties of the angel'-strumpet were well known to various South American peoples at the time of the Spanish conquest, the religious matrix surrounding indigenous consumption of the plants has long since evaporated in most areas. Among the more ghoulish ancient usages were those by the Chibcha Indians of Colombia. According to a sixteenth-century narrative by the soldier and cleric Juan de Castellanos, when a chief died, "his women and slaves" were anesthetized so that they could be buried (quieted, but alive) with the departed. More recent reports from Colombia indicate a burgeoning use of powdered Brugmansia or its extracts to close unsuspecting victims before robbery or rape.

The early European explorers who ventured into the South American wilderness included those seeking riches (gold, rubber, and quinine), those seeking souls, and those in pursuit of hidden botanical treasures. They often traveled the same paths and river roads, but of the three types of explorers, botanists may have left the slightest footprints and the gentlest wake.

Among the modern-day scientists who explored Brugmansia in the field was the late Richard Evans Schultes, of Harvard University, renowned for his research on plants with therapeutic and psychoactive properties. During the winter of 1941-42, Schultes crossed the Colombian Andes before descending into the western Amazon Basin, his Eden. His route took him through the broad bowl of Sibundoy Valley, where the Putumayo, a major Amazonian tributary, begins as a trickle. Living in the verdant valley were Spanish settlers along with Kamsa and Inga Indians. Schultes observed that among the plants they cultivated were potatoes; the tree tomato (Cyphomandra), whose tart fruit makes a lovely juice; and naranjilla, with its large fuzzy purple leaves and delicious fruit.

Schultes also recorded a number of medicinal and hallucinogenic species. The Kamsa had long practiced hallucinogenic healing rituals and had developed a lexicon of angel's-trumpet strains and species, each with its devotees. Hundreds of these plants were propagated throughout Sibundoy Valley, blurring the line between wild and tended plants. Schultes established a rapport with the Kamsa, who shared both their knowledge and their plants with him (some years later, Schultes arranged for one curandero, or healer, Pedro Juajibioy, to take a master's degree at Harvard).

Among the. species Schultes found was a tree with sixteen- to eighteen-inch-long willowlike leaves. Its white flowers, with five spoon-shaped petals, each ending in a long point, were like no others. He recognized the mystery plant as a member of the nightshade family, but he thought that, while closely related to Brugmansia, it warranted designation as a new genus and species, which he named Methysticodendron amesianum. Chemical analyses done on the plant during the next five years showed that it possessed the same array of powerful alkaloids as the Brugmansia species found in the valley.

My interest in the angel's-trumpet was piqued in 1996 by a letter from a California collector, who alerted me to the fact that Smith College's own conservatories, where I work as a botanist, had been a hotbed of genetic research in the 1940s and 1950s. A. F. Blakeslee had used Brugmansia and the closely related genus Datura as subjects for research into heredity, and this collector wanted to know if we still had some of the rarer species. After fifty years this might have seemed a futile request, but in fact some still thrived in our huge palm house.

I had been exposed to Brugmansia while taking courses with Schultes at Harvard and now eagerly delved further into this fascinating group of plants. The genus had been a subject of research by a succession of Harvard botanists and students, whose dissertations, reports, and dried field collections held a wealth of data. The best work was done by Tommie Lockwood, who spent a year researching these plants in the Andes and then doing complex breeding trials to decipher the number of species in the wild and their ability to hybridize. (Tragically, Lockwood died in an automobile accident in Mexico while he was leading students on a field trip.) The more I looked into the genus, the more I became hooked. Next thing I knew, I was planning an expedition.

I contacted my collecting partner, Melvin Shemluck, a botany professor at Quinsigamond Community College in Massachusetts and also a former student of Schultes's. Using samples taken from Sibundoy Valley, he had done his thesis on the chemistry of Iochroma fuchsioides--another flowering shrub that is a chemical powerhouse. Mel and I enlisted a third participant, John Bela, who had recently studied botany at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and together we roughed out an itinerary for collecting new samples from the locations frequented by Schultes and his students. We also wanted to bring back cuttings of Methysticodendron and grow a plant so that Schultes, then in his early eighties, could see it flower. (Years earlier, Schultes had distributed cuttings to various institutions, but we could locate no living specimens.)

In the summer of 1997 we traveled to Quito, Ecuador, and set out down-slope to the sweltering lowlands around Santo Domingo de los Colorados for our first day of gathering. Here we found both the white- and the pink-flowered forms of B. versicolor. (We watched as foraging hummingbirds, finding the huge blossoms too long for their beaks, solved the dilemma by poking holes in the floral tube at the point where the nectary lay.) From there our route took us north into Colombia and on to the town of Sibundoy, in Sibundoy Valley. As we ambled down the main street to get a cup of coffee, trying not to arouse the suspicions of a police garrison on the alert for cocaine smugglers, we quickly found how impossible it is to be anonymous in a small town. Soon everyone knew we were botanicos.

After a night's rest, we headed south on a dirt lane toward the Kamsa lands where Schultes had first seen the rare Methysticodendron. Our innkeeper had told us we would encounter a small botanic garden. Along our route, the density of angel's-trumpets was astounding. Hundreds of them were planted as ornamentals beside humble cottages; others served as living fence posts or as shade trees for pigs and cattle. But no one we asked gave us clear directions to the botanic garden.

As we continued "botanizing" along the road, however, we encountered a short, rotund, elderly man who introduced himself as Florencio. He had a bowl haircut and wore a tribal tunic and what must have been fifteen pounds of fine white beads. Explaining who we were and what our purpose was, we showed him some fifty-year-old publications about the plants we sought. Florencio immediately recognized a photo of an old Kamsa shaman, Marcelino Chindoy, and announced, "El finale" (He's dead now). While the four of us walked back toward Sibundoy together, passing a variety of plants both native and introduced, Florencio expounded on their medicinal uses. We had met one of the valley's elder shamans.

Soon Florencio introduced us to the man in charge of the botanic garden, who turned out to be Marcelino Juajibioy, a son of the curandero who had assisted Schultes. We showed him the publications we had brought. In one was Schultes's photo of an eight- or nine-year-old boy, in tribal dress of tunic and beads, holding a blossom of Methysticodendron. To our amazement, Marcelino informed us that he was that boy. After gazing at another photo, a mature Methysticodendron in a field of corn, he paused and said, "That tree is gone now. It was my aunt's."

The next day Marcelino took us to see his garden. Getting there involved crossing a number of fields, drainage ditches, log bridges, and pastures, with Marcelino pointing out medicinal plants along the way. When we reached his garden, we found its design to be decidedly non-Olmstedian: here, rare native and medicinal plants were pragmatically intercropped with corn. In a drizzling rain, Marcelino showed us the monkey-puzzle tree, a native of Chile; the rare gymnosperms Decussocarpus and Podocargus; and the famous vision-inducing Banisteriopsis vine. He generously let us take cuttings of whatever we could use.

The prize we had traveled so far to collect was hidden in the farthest corner of the garden. Marcelino brought us to a ten-foot-high, two-year-old tree with narrow, eighteen-inch-long leaves. The plant bore only one flower bud, not yet ready to open. During our days of combing the valley, this was the only Methysticodendron specimen we got to see. The plants seem to be jealously guarded by the shamans who own them. I stood atop Mel's shoulders to get cuttings, entertaining Marcelino with our clumsy circus acrobatics.

On the day of our departure we gave Marcelino copies of Schultes's monograph on Methysticodendron, and he handed us a letter to deliver to Schultes. The Harvard botanist's work had been the thread that brought us together. We left feeling certain our paths would cross again.

From Sibundoy we returned to Ecuador and crossed to the western side of the Andes to visit Los Cedros Biological Preserve. Near the town of Pacto, our bus passed an old adobe farmhouse with a thatched roof. I thought I caught a glimpse of a Brugmansia with thin leaves and made a mental note to check it out on our return trip. After a five-day stint collecting specimens in the highland rainforests, we passed back through Pacto. While our bus took on more passengers, I hurried up the road to the farmhouse. There they were, a row of what appeared to be mature Methysticodendron in full flower.

As I set up a tripod to photograph the blossoms--recorded for the first time outside Sibundoy Valley--a local dog pack descended from the hillside to demonstrate its total disrespect for English commands. They were followed by an old woman carrying an apronful of oranges. We exchanged greetings, and, communicating in pidgin Spanish, I learned that she had been growing the plants for thirty years and knew of both their medicinal use for rheumatism and their hallucinogenic properties. She allowed me to take a few cuttings and offered me some oranges as well, all under the glaring eyes of her dogs. While I would have liked to learn more, the bus rounded the corner and I had to push on.

For Mel, John, and me, this find was the most satisfying aspect of the trip. We now had precious Methysticodendron germ plasm to compare with that from Sibundoy. If they proved identical, this might suggest that curanderos had transported a cutting or plant from one side of the Andes to the other. On the other hand, Methysticodenron might be a mutation that occurs sporadically throughout the natural range of one of the Brugmansia species. The plants now growing at Smith College from our two sets of cuttings look sufficiently different that, despite their similar features, we can tell they are not identical clones. DNA testing of this material from well-documented sources should reveal their precise relationship.

Although the slow process of increasing the stock of M. amesianum has only begun, we at Smith College should eventually be able to distribute cuttings to other botanic gardens. Given this species' rarity in the wild and given the age of those who tend to it, Methysticodendron could conceivably vanish in South America within a generation or two. Eventually, we hope to work with a group of nurseries to market the plant and return a royalty to the botanic garden in Sibundoy.

Following our return home, Mel and I had the pleasure of bringing a rooted cutting to the Botanical Museum at Harvard to show Schultes. At least we thought we were just going to show it to him. The little plant went home with him and grew outside that summer on his deck. Two old friends reunited in the sun.

The Father of Ethnobotany

By Wade Davis

For more than fifty years, Richard Evans Schultes, a kindly professor of botany, loomed large over the Harvard campus. In South America, mountains bore his name, as did national parks. Students knew him as the world's leading authority on medicinal and hallucinogenic plants--as the plant explorer who sparked the psychedelic era with the scientific discovery of psilocybin mushrooms in Mexico in 1938.

In 1941, searching for wild rubber and the botanical source of curare, Schultes ventured into northwestern Amazonia, where he remained for twelve years, mapping uncharted rivers and living among two dozen indigenous peoples, all the while pursuing the mysteries of the rainforest. He collected more than 27,000 botanical specimens, including 2,000 medicinal plants and more than 300 species previously unknown to science. He was a living link to the great naturalists of the nineteenth century and to a distant era when the tropical rainforests stood inviolate, a mantle of green stretching across entire continents.

Schultes's devotion to students was legendary, his teaching style unique. In all the years I knew him, we never had an intellectual conversation. He was a man of deeds, who would pass along thoughts that were both gifts and challenges. "There is one river that I would very much like you to see," he would say, knowing that the experiences involved in getting there would ensure that, were you able to reach the destination alive, you would emerge from the forest a wiser, more knowledgeable human being.

Wade Davis, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, has written a biography of Richard Evans Schultes, One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest (Simon and Schuster, 1997).

"To dream of such plants as Brugmansia in a foreign land and then to go there and search for them is an adult's version of a treasure hunt," says Rob Nicholson ("Naturalist at Large," page 20). Pictured here with his research partner Melvin Shemluck (right) and Colombian herbalist Marcelino Juajibioy (center), Nicholson was one of the many students at Harvard in the 1970s who took courses with botanist Richard Evans Schultes, whose explorations of Amazonia were by then legendary. Nicholson now manages the extensive conservatory collections at the Botanic Garden of Smith College (www.smith.edu/garden/).

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