Psychedelic Plants

Artemisia Absinthium

Common Names Wormwood, absinthe, la Fee Verte, the Green Muse. that sage of the glaciers, absinthe Arthur Rimbaud (letter to Delahaye) As the term absinthe is used both as a synonym for wormwood and also as the name of the famous liqueur, we will use wormwood to refer to Artemisia absinthium, and absinthe to refer to the alcoholic beverage. RelatedSpecies Artemisia vulgaris mugwort (also called wormwood). Riparian, herbage full of vertue nervine, stimulant, a wash for poison oak, protection...

Calea Zacatechichi

Common Dog grass, Thle-pelakano, leaf of God. Zacatechichi is Nahuatl for bitter grass. Name5 The bitterness is in a class with Artemisia absinthium. delated Species Not all races are psychoactive, even within the genus. Needs study. Taxonomy Sunflower family, Asteraceae, found from central Mexico south to Costa Rica. The plant likes open ground readily colonizes disturbed ground and land that has been burned over. The genus Calea is neotropical and contains a hundred other species besides...

Piper Methysticum

And over a thousand other names. Most kava people have dis-Names tinct names for each of the many varieties of kava that they grow, usually fifty or more. Figure that there are three hundred languages in Indonesian New Guinea alone, and at least that many in the rest of Melanesia, and scores more in Micronesia and Polynesia. Just multiply fifty by five hundred. Related Species Piper betle, the leaf used to wrap betel nut Piper nigrum, black pepper Piper cubeba, cubeb....

Scirpus Atrovirens

Taxonomy Part of the great sedge family, the Cyperaceae, aquatic plants characterized by tri angular stems. Other genera within the family include the sedges, Carex spp., and Cyperus, tough little ditch plants with long graceful bracts subtending the inflorescence. Papyrus is a species of Cyperus, and many other species within the family worldwide are used in mat making and basketry. Scirpus atrovirens is a good example of how much investigation still remains to done. Here is a plant, known to...

Nicotiana Tabacum And Related Species

Common 'Names Tobacco, petun, picietl. Taxonomy The two cultivated species are Nicotiana tabacum and N. rusticum. Both of these species are tetraploids, the result of a fertile hybrid between two wild species sometime in antiquity, evidently in the Andean region of South America. Almost all American and European commercial tobaccos are Nicotiana tabacum. There are some five dozen wild species of Nicotiana, three-quarters of them native to the Americas. These species include N.glauca, N....