Baja California Sea of Cortez

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Baja CaliforniaSea of Cortez

• Native Plants and their dietary and medical uses

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Wild Fig

• Scientific Ficus thonningii
• Family Mcraceae

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Peyote Cactus

• Mexican Indians of thousands of years ago used
  this cactus for its hallucinogenic properties,
  medicinal substances which are used to heal
  bruises and wounds.
• Fact
• Peyote cactus has antibiotic properties

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Barrel Cactus
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Mormon Tea

• Ephedra nevadensis Wats.
• Brigham Tea, Desert Tea, Joint Fir, Mexican Tea,
  Popotillo, Squaw Tea
• Ephedra Family Gnetaceae
• The tea is brewed from the powdered twigs.
• Different species of the plant are used to cure
  different ailments which include
• Colds, fever, headaches, and as a remedy for
  syphilis and for various other internal
  troubles.
• The dried and powdered twigs were used in
  poultices for burns and ointments for sores. A
  preparation from the scales on the leaves was
  applied to help stop bleeding.
• Mormon tea is related to the Chinese plant
  mahaung (E. sinica), which contains the drug
  ephedrine- a bronchial dilator, decongestant, and
  central nervous system stimulant much used in
  modern medicine. The American species has no
  ephedrine.

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Manzanilla

• Local chamomile
• Used to treat colic and other infant ailments
• Make a tea of yerba buena, a mint, to treat
  stomachache.
• A salve of comfrey is applied to pimples
• A dandruff shampoo is made from yucca root
• Osha root is chewed for toothache, headache, and
  indigestion made into a poultice for sores
  brewed into a tea for colds and drunk
  prophylactically to prevent hangovers

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Earliest Treatments

• In past societies sickness was viewed as a
  punishment from the gods. Early medicine men
  treated the sick with prayers and rituals that
  included magic potions or local herbs.
• It may be true that the herbs were selected first
  because of their color, odor, shape, or rarity,
  what followed could hardly have been a process
  guided by whim alone.
• The application of herbs was more or less
  trial-and-error, experimentation over many
  generations. However how do you explain the fact
  that, oceans apart from one another, different
  civilizations learned to use closely related
  medicinal plants in almost identical ways?

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• Archeological discoveries at a 60,000-year-old
  Neanderthal burial ground in Iraq point to the
  use of several plants that still figure in fold
  medicine.
• marshmallow, yarrow, and groundsel

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