![](//www.4rfv.com/images/no_image.jpg)
Mule deer in yerba mansa | Photo: J.N. Stuart, some rights reserved
This article includes discussion of Native Californian peoples traditional use of plants as medicine. It is intended for cultural and environmental education purposes only, and should not be taken as medical advice.
Native people in California relied on whatever living things grew around them for food, fiber, for clothing and shelter. Their approach to medicine was no different. Based on millennia of experience and experimentation, knowledge handed down generation by generation woven seamlessly into culture, Native people had a pharmacopeia for many common illnesses and injuries in the form of the plants, animals, and fungi with which they shared the landscape.
In many cases, modern scientists have found biological and chemical properties inside these medicinal plants that may well account for the healing properties ascribed to them by Native healers. The canonical example is aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid, originally derived from compounds found in willow bark. But other examples abound, from the eucalyptol in white sage (a topical anaesthetic used in many over-the-counter cough and cold medicines) to the ephedrine and related compounds found in joint-fir (Ephedra species).
Let's take a look at five different plants used by a number of California Native peoples. One is benign enough to be used for pleasure, another so dangerous you probably shouldn't touch it, and the other three somewhere in between.
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterSend EmailMoreCommentPin on PinterestShare on LinkedInShare on Google+
--
--
One of the overall differences between traditional Native medical practices and Western medicine is that practitioners of Traditional medicine often don't see their discipline as distinct from other parts of their culture, from cooking to music to architecture to literature. Pulling an individual plant out of that context, as Western science often does, and then analyzing that plant's biochemistry and pulling out individual substances to test for pharmacological activity, is a very different way to learn about how a plant works. We've learned a lot about plants that way. But we run the risk of missing the point when we analyze plants rather than placing them in context.
We also run the risk of appropriating hard-won knowledge for our own profit. When pharmaceutical companies, for example, examine the constituents of traditional medicines, whether from the rainforest or the tundra, and synthesize analogous chemicals for use as drugs, they profit from the hard-won, long-preserved knowledge of the traditional peoples who discovered those plants' properties.
With all that said, the five plants covered here have been extensively studied, so discussing them won't likely contribute to further appropriation. So at the risk of missing the larger cultural point by talking about plant chemistry, let's dive in.
Yerba mansa | Photo: Elaine with gray cats, some rights reserved
Yerba Mansa (Anemopsis californica)
An attractive plant that grows in wet soil throughout the southern two thirds of California, yerba mansa is found along seeps and wet places elsewhere in the Southwest as well, from Texas to Baja California. When in flower, it's hard to mistake yerba mansa for anything else: its striking white, sunflower-like blooms are held four or five inches above a spreading mat of flat, gray-green leaves with a waxy coating.
Yerba mansa was and is held in high regard by many Native peoples in California and elsewhere. Mexican curanderos regard the plant as something like a cure-all; Spanish settlers in present-day Mexico and Texas adopted its use from local Native people as early as the 17th Century.
California Native peoples from the coastal Chumash to the desert Shoshone have used yerba mansa as an anaesthetic and antiseptic for a very long time. Its dried roots, ground into a powder, are used to relieve sore throats in much the same way as the eastern North American plant goldenseal. As wild goldenseal is endangered due to overharvesting, some have suggested that yerba mansa, which is easily cultivated, might offer a more ecologically benign herbal throat medicine.
The leaves also play a role in traditional herbal medicine, with an infusion often used externally on small wounds as an antiseptic. An infusion of the roots is more widely used. The first person who thought of using yerba mansa as a medicine was likely following her nose: the roots have a strong smell containing notes of camphor and eucalyptus.
Among the chemical constituents found in yerba mansa is methyl eugenol, commonly used to impart a clove-like flavor to processed foods. Methyl eugenol acts as an antispasmodic and anaesthetic, which likely explains at least some of yerba mansa's persistent popularity as an herbal medicine.
A note of caution, however: methyl eugenol is a known mutagen, and a likely carcinogen in humans.
Creosote in bloom | Photo: Col Ford and Natasha de Vere, some rights reserved
Creosote (Larrea tridentata)
Here's another medicinal plant that is both widely used and worthy of some caution. Creosote, often called chaparral by herbalists, is likely the most common woody plant in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. In many places in the hot desert lowlands, especially in summer when the spring annuals have died back, creosote might be the only vascular plant growing for hundreds of feet in any direction.
More from tending the wild
Oneness With That Place: A Chat with Native Herbalist Sage LaPena
Every Plant That Exists Has Meaning: Traditional Ecological Medicine
Plant Medicine: Grow Your Own Chia
1 of 2
next
Sniff creosote leaves on one of those hot summer days and you won't be surprised that people have thought to use it as a plant medicine. The leaves' pu
More from KCET
13/12/2016
Helen Hunt Jackson - misunderstood romantic, misremembered advocate of Native American rights - lingered some weeks in Los Angeles between December 1881 and the...
13/12/2016
More on the Holidays in L.A.
The Long-Awaited Return of Santa's Village
Five Ways Southern California Once Dressed Itself Up for the Holidays
Where ...
13/12/2016
Cinder cones along Kelbaker Road in the Mojave National Preserve | Photo: Don Barrett, some rights reserved
Commentary: As a soldier in the U.S. Army, I serve...
13/12/2016
Silver Lake, north of Baker, in January 2005 after a wet winter | Photo: Chris Clarke
The California Desert includes some of the driest, hottest places on the...
13/12/2016
The video for Helado Negro's It's My Brown Skin is suffused with light...
12/12/2016
I have some bad news for Angelenos dreaming of a White Christmas this year: you were probably born a half-century too late.
Snow once fell on the Los Angeles...
10/12/2016
Prisoners of War, currently airing on KCET on Mondays at 10:00 p.m., features the story of three Israeli soldiers returning from 17 years of captivity. The insp...
10/12/2016
Watch the Link Voices documentary, South Bureau Homicide, on our website. The film explores the roles of LAPD homicide detectives and a local communitys anti-vi...
10/12/2016
More on Poetry
U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera on Poetry, Progress and his California Roots
Mentoring the Next Generation of L.A. Letters
Luis Ro...
10/12/2016
Lizards eye view of a humane pit trap used to count wildlife | Photo: Joshua Tree National Park
Nearly thirty years since the term citizen science was first u...
10/12/2016
Los Angeles artist Don Suggs. | Photo: Paul OConnor
More Visual Art
The Triumphs and Hardships of Black America are Illustrated by Artist Nikkolas Smith
...
09/12/2016
Mule deer in yerba mansa | Photo: J.N. Stuart, some rights reserved
This article includes discussion of Native Californian peoples traditional use of plants a...
09/12/2016
Who among us hasn't eaten at least one meal at Denny's? You'll find many types of people eating at this American favorite - hungover college student...
09/12/2016
Sage LaPena | Photo: KCET
Sage LaPena is a Nomtipom Wintu ethnobotanist and certified medical herbalist. She has worked for years to preserve and pass along N...
09/12/2016
One of Californias newest wolf residents, discovered this year in Lassen County | Photo: CDFW
Five years to the month after OR-7 became the first wild wolf to...
09/12/2016
The Oceti Sakowin Camp | Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Its been an eventful few days at the Standing Rock Reservation. On Sunday, December 4, the U.S. Army ...
09/12/2016
Portrait of Lisa Schulte. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Explore the Work of More Visual Artists
The Triumphs and Hardships of Black America are Illustra...
07/12/2016
Artbound took home two First Place statuettes at the 9th annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards on Sunday. Our documentary, Charles Lummis: Rei...
07/12/2016
When Grace E. Simons relocated to Los Angeles from New York in the early 1940s, ...
07/12/2016
Lives are lived. They span decades; they inhabit moments, eras, and epochs. For all of us, our lives thread their way through the currents of the day, but few o...
07/12/2016
A lot of people thought Santa's Village would never reopen. Others never dared to dream that it could.
It all started on May 28, 1955 with the opening of t...
07/12/2016
More From SoCal Wanderer
5 Lesser-Known Classic Car Collections
Six Great Stair Treks to Help Work Off Thanksgiving Dinner
Six Great Places to Experienc...
07/12/2016
When OY peer into the future, they see something utterly unique: a world of billowy, technicolor ur-humans, living in a state of low-gravity euphoria. It's ...
05/12/2016
School at Oceti Sakowin Camp, Standing Rock | Photo: Oceti Sakowin Camp/Barbara J. Miner, some rights reserved
Commentary: Finally, some good news out of 201...
02/12/2016
When many of us visualize postwar lesbian and gay activism, we think of gay prid...
02/12/2016
The Cadiz Dunes with the Old Woman Mountains in the background | Photo: NASA Earth Observatory
Commentary: The Old Woman Mountains stretch from the sandy dese...
01/12/2016
In 1979, California Gov. Jerry Brown is sworn in for his second term by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird, whom voters later removed from the court be...
01/12/2016
Growing your food is a lot better than buying it from a market because they spray it with pesticides or something that could harm us or harm the plant and not m...
01/12/2016
Councilmember Mitch OFarrell, Lewis MacAdams, Councilmember Ed P. Reyes, Irma Munoz, Board Chair, MRCA, Councilmember Tom LaBonge and Gary Lee Moore, City Engin...
01/12/2016
P-45 in the Santa Monica Mountains | Photo: National Park Service
[Editors note: This commentary is prompted by a ranchers move to kill one of the Santa Monic...
01/12/2016
Photo: Stef McDonald
On Election Day, November 8, 2016, Los Angeles County voted well. California voted well. The rest of the nation? Not so much.
I cant sug...
01/12/2016
The Golden Girls of Rio, a book by Nikkolas Smith, puts female athletes front an...
30/11/2016
Persistence pays off. | Photo: Vladimir Varfolomeef, some rights reserved
Commentary: If you're an environmentally concerned person who reads the news, th...
30/11/2016
(Left) A non-operational Angels Flight is observed by pedestrians. Photo: Sara N...
30/11/2016
Detective Sal LaBarbera is nearly two years into his retirement after 28 years at the Los Angeles Police Department South Bureaus homicide division and he has y...
30/11/2016
More on Classic Cars
Jimenez Bros Custom Cars: Some History and Some Love
The Nethercutt Collection
Lately, there's been a lot of buzz about the Pe...
30/11/2016
You might think of Xavier Thomas' most recent album, d bruit & istanbul, as a musical travelogue. For Thomas, who records adventurous electronic music und...
30/11/2016
Though most moviegoers will have seen a lot of Bradbury Building, they may not recognize it as a landmark of Los Angeles architecture - unless, of course, theyv...
29/11/2016
Before movies, there were lemons. Hollywood at the turn of the 20th century was a place of religious zeal; a town founded by an ardent Prohibitionist and a devo...
29/11/2016
Private shopping malls like the Grove might orchestrate the most extravagant holiday displays today, but that wasnt always the case. From candy-cane streetcars ...
29/11/2016
Planting white sage | Photo: Suzies Farm, some rights reserved
This article includes discussion of Native Californian peoples traditional use of plants as med...
29/11/2016
Chia blossom | Photo: Teresa Alexander-Arab, some rights reserved
This article includes discussion of Native Californian peoples traditional use of plants as ...
29/11/2016
Dev Patel (as Saroo Brierley) and Priyanka Bose (as Kamla) in the film Lion.
Saroo Brierley was a small boy when he got lost. This wasnt a case of a tiny chi...
26/11/2016
Mercedes Dorame, from the Living Proof photo series.
More Photography
Shes Photographing Every Native American Tribe in the United States
These Native A...
26/11/2016
Continuum Basket: Flora by Gerald Clarke Jr. reflects the centuries-old Cahuilla tradition of basket-making.
More on Native American Art
Her Photos of Nat...
25/11/2016
Tents and tipis at Standing Rock | Photo: Leslieamsterdam, some rights reserved
In March, 1621 a man named Samoset, a leader of his Abenaki people, decided to...
25/11/2016
Deja Jones, an Eastern Shoshone tribal member, channels Ava Gardner in the series Real NDNZ Re-take Hollywood by Pamela J. Peters.
When her father yelled Ki...
24/11/2016
Plastic and trash found in the L.A. River
Last October, heavy rains poured into Los Angeles. It was a welcome sight for those intensely aware of the drought....
24/11/2016
This sage bundle was ethically sourced. The ones for sale in fancy stores? Maybe not so much. | Photo: Department of Defense
Beneath a canopy of drought-stres...
23/11/2016
On July 17, 1955, some 70 million Americans tuned into ABC to watch the opening ceremonies for Disneyland - a product of 160 acres of Anaheim farmland, $17 mill...