Latua pubiflora (common name in ) is the single species of the monotypic genus Latua, endemic to the coastal mountains of southern Chile. A shrub or small tree to 10 m in height, bearing attractive, magenta-to-red, hummingbird-pollinated flowers, it is extremely poisonous – hallucinogenic (deliriant) in smaller doses – due to tropane alkaloid content and is used by Chilean machi (shamans) of the Mapuche–Huilliche people in traditional medicine, as a poison and to enter trance states. Its elegant flowers and yellow tomato-like fruit are attractive enough to merit cultivation as an ornamental (despite the extreme toxicity).Armando T. Hunziker: The Genera of Solanaceae. A.R.G. Gantner Verlag K.G., Ruggell, Liechtenstein 2001. Schultes, Richard Evans; Hofmann, Albert (1979). The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (2nd ed.). Springfield Illinois: Charles C. Thomas.Emboden, William, Narcotic Plants – Hallucinogens, stimulants, inebriants, and hypnotics, their origins and uses 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, pub. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York 1979, .
Description Woody, spiny, evergreen, heteroblastic plant in height with one (tree) to several (shrub) trunks in diameter, trunks spreading upward and outward from base; bark thin, grey-green, streaked with corky, longitudinal fissures, becoming reticulate and somewhat rough, reddish to greyish brown / buff; branches smooth, grey-green and armed with spines; branchlets cylindrical, those of current year's growth covered with yellowish-brown pubescence, glabrescent; spines rigid, erect, arising as modified branches in leaf axils, up to 2 cm in length, usually with small leaf at base and one or two minute cataphylls toward the apex; leaf blades 3–12 cm in length by 1.5–4 cm in width, finely hairy, petioles circa 2 mm long. Flowers pendent, borne in late Winter / early Spring. pedicels tomentose, 5–20 mm long; calyx 8–10 mm long, densely pubescent; corolla urceolate (urn-shaped), magenta to red, 3–4 cm in length and circa 1.5 cm at the middle, with a densely pubescent exterior; style magenta, bearing bright green, capitate stigma; filaments of stamens magenta, attached at base of corolla for circa 8 mm and hairy at their bases, anthers purple, somewhat heart-shaped and circa 2 mm in length, dehiscing to reveal ash-grey pollen. Fruit a globose berry, a little flattened in shape and of a yellow to orange-yellow colour, circa 2 cm in diameter, seated in a densely hairy, accrescent calyx 11–16 mm in length, the lobes spreading and the calyx often splitting when the berry is fully ripe. Seeds thick, slightly longer than broad, circa 2 mm long, dark brown to black.
Flower colour
As Plowman notes, there has been a measure of controversy concerning the colour range displayed by the flowers of Latua pubiflora.Scala, A.C. 1920, Contribución al Estudio Histológico de la Flora Chilena IV: Latua pubiflora ( Griseb. ) Phil. in Revista Chilena de Historia Natural Vol. XXIV (4). pp. 73–78.Gunckel, L.H., Contribución al Conocimiento de la Flora Valdiviana VI. Revista de la Associación Chilena de Química y Farmacia Vol I (5), pp. 2–3. The label on the type specimen bears the Latin description flores coccinei i.e. 'flowers deep red', whereas subsequent authors have referred to them as variously 'violet',Murillo, A., 1899 Plantes Medicinales du Chile. Exposition Universelle de Paris, Section Chilenne pp. 152–155. 'red'Wettstein R. v. 1891 Solanaceae in Engler A. and Prantl K., Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, Teil IV, abteilung 3a, pp. 12 & 15. and atro-violaceus (dark violet) on the chromotaxy scale devised by Pier Andrea Saccardo. However, after observing flowers gathered from Latua plants growing in several different localities, Plowman expressed the opinion that, while there is some variation in flower colour, the flowers are usually magenta (as defined in Horticultural Color Chart 27/1).
Taxonomy
The plant first entered the scientific record in the mid 19th century with the publication of the Linnaean binomial Lycioplesium pubiflorum by German botanist and phytogeographer August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach in 1854.August Grisebach, Rodolfo Amando Philippi Krumwiede, and Claude Gay (1854), Systematische Bemerkungen über die beiden ersten Pflanzensammlungen Philippi's und Lechler's im südlichen Chile und an der Maghellans-Strasse (Systematic remarks on the first two plant collections of Philippi and Lechler in southern Chile and the Straits of Magellan region – abbreviation: Syst. Bemerk.): pp. 40–41. Grisebach described the plant (under the name Lycioplesium pubiflorum) from a specimen collected by Lechler near the city of Ancud on the north coast of Chiloé Island.
The genus name Latua was published by German-Chilean naturalist Rodolfo Amando Philippi Krumwiede in the journal Botanisches Zeitung No. 33, August 1858: Latua Ph., eine neues Genus der Solanaceen (pp. 241–242), as the generic element in the binomial Latua venenosa.
The current binomial, Latua pubiflora, juxtaposing Grisebach's specific name and Philippi's genus name was published by French botanist and physician Henri Ernest Baillon in Histoire des Plantes vol. 9, published in Paris in 1888 by Librairie Hachette - page 334.Plowman, Timothy, Gyllenhaal, Lars Olof and Lindgren, Jan Erik Latua pubiflora magic plant from southern Chile Botanical Museum Leaflets Harvard University Vol. 23, No. 2, Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 12, 1971
Scientific name The genus name Latua was created by Philippi by Latinising the indigenous Mapudungun (Mapuche / Araucanian) name for the plant, which exists in a number of local variants, the oldest of which is the (now obsolete) Latue-hue. This is derived from the Mapuche verb 'to die', , a causative particle, and 'the instrument with which something is done', giving the meaning 'that which causes (something) to die' i.e. 'lethal' or 'deadly'.Febrés, P.A., 1764, Arte de la Lengua General del Reyno de Chile (publisher not given) Lima, page 528.Lenz, R., 1904, Diccionario Etimolójico de las Voces Chilenas Derivadas de Lenguas Indígenas Americanas pub. Imprenta Cervantes, Santiago. page 425.Valenzuela, P.A. 1917 "Glosario Etimológico de Nombres de Hombres, Animales, Plantas, Ríos y Lugares y de Vocablos Incorporados en el Lenguaje Vulgar Aborígenes de Chile" Revista Chilena de Historia y Geographía, Vol. 22, page 290. Three more modern forms of the same derivation are the regional variants latúe, latué and latuy. [The last of these can also designate the (unrelated) hallucinogenic plant Desfontainia spinosa, which, although psychoactive, has not been recorded in the literature as being dangerously toxic].Rätsch, Christian (1998). The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and its Applications. Rochester: Park Street Press: page 219. The Latin specific epithet pubiflora means simply 'having hairy flowers'. The binomial Latua pubiflora in its entirety may thus be translated as the deadly poisonous plant with hairy flowers.
Vernacular names in Spanish The vernacular name for the plant in Spanish most frequently encountered in the literature is , meaning 'tree of the sorcerers', in reference to the use of the plant by the Chilean machi. This reflects the fact that, while the machi of today are usually female, historically this important rôle as practitioner of the sacred was often filled by transvestite or homosexual men, or intersex individuals.Latcham, R.E. 1924 La Organización Social y las Creencias Religiosas de los Antiguos Araucanos Publicaciones del Museo de Etnologia y Antropologia Vol. III.Faron, L.C.,1964 'Shamanism and Sorcery among the Mapuche of Chile' in R.A. Manners ed. Process and Pattern in Culture pub. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago. The inference is that in a Mapuche culture less affected by European conceptions of gender and the sacred, an ambiguous or non-binary status was actually one of the signs or markers of sacred status. By contrast, in an ironic twist, gender-fluid individuals in the Mapuche culture of today can fall victim to discrimination.Bacigalupo, Ana (2007). Shamans of the Foye Tree. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Other vernacular names recorded include palo de bruja – 'witch tree' and palo mato – 'tree (stick) that kills', the latter being identical in sense to the Mapudungun word (see above).
Distribution
...the plant grows only in the narrow coastal cordillera between Valdivia and Chiloé, a difficult mountainous terrain with an extremely wet climate and few roads; during the rainy season, the existing roads are nearly impassable.
– thus Plowman, writing in 1971, adding, on page 66: Latua pubiflora is found sporadically in the coastal mountains of southern Chile between 40 degrees and 43 degrees latitude from the province of Valdivia to Chiloé. This region has...over 2540 mm (100 in.) of rainfall annually. Latua occurs primarily in the middle elevations of the cordillera between 300 and 900 m (900 and 2700 ft.).
The range of distribution of the species thus corresponds roughly to the Los Lagos Region (Lakes Region), the plant occurring in all four of its component provinces: Chiloé, Valdivia, Osorno and Llanquihue. The Los Lagos Region is the only area within Chile classified as having predominantly Köppen climate type Cfb (Oceanic climate) according to the Köppen climate classification. The indigenous Huilliche people, whose shamans possess much esoteric knowledge concerning Latua (and, indeed, their entire indigenous flora), call this land to which they and their plant are native Futahuillimapu – 'great land of the south'.
Habitat
An element originally of the Valdivian temperate rainforest, Latua is to be found increasingly in areas occupied by fields and pastures as a result of extensive deforestation undertaken to produce timber and devote land to grazing. Despite this habitat loss, the species had (at the time of Plowman's writing) adapted well to the more open conditions prevailing on cultivated land – so much so that, although known from relatively few localities, it had actually become something of a weed of roadsides and open places in those localities where it was present, thanks to its propensity for suckering, spreading easily by adventitious branches from its underground parts – despite efforts to eradicate it by removing top-growth. Latua grows usually as a tall shrub along clearings and in secondary forests and can, in shaded woodland, attain its maximum recorded height of 10m. It is frequently to be found growing in association with species belonging to the genera Eucryphia (e.g. E. cordifolia and E. glutinosa), Laurelia (i.e. the single Chilean species L. sempervirens) and Chusquea (a genus of New World bamboos).
Flowering season In the northern part of its range, in the provinces of Osorno and Valdivia, Latua pubiflora is Spring-flowering and Autumn-fruiting, the flowers starting to appear in October at the beginning of the rainy season and the fruits being borne in February and March. By contrast, in the southern part of its range – where there is less seasonal variation in precipitation – the plant flowers in Autumn or Winter: in Llanquihue, Latua bears flowers in March, while in Chiloé they are borne in July (Southern Hemisphere seasons). Plowman further notes that, under favourable conditions, the plant may flower more than once a year, but that he and his colleagues had not observed this personally.
In cultivation in the U.K., Latua is Spring-flowering, blooming in March and April (as in the wild in the province of Llanquihue).[Personal observation, substantiated by dates upon which particular photos used on this page taken].
Toxicity