Ethnobotany of my yard, Part 1

So my wife and I are renting a little SW style house in Tempe. It is a pretty place, with a pool even. Anyway, our landlord had previously lived in the house, and she maintained a nice landscape with native desert plants. I am teaching a class this semester on ethnobotany at ASU and have a "Plant of the Week" section each week. So far the plants have been Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), a somewhat edible plant very common in disturbed areas in the southeast US. I say "somewhat" because eating it can make you quite sick. Anybody recall the song Poke Salad Annie? Anyway, if you do eat it, you have to boil it several times, fry it, etc., etc. Research has shown that the chemicals in the plant can inhibit the production of amino acids in cells infected with viruses, and scientists have been studying this application in fighting HIV.


The next plant we discussed was the European yew tree (Taxus baccata). When I was a kid, we had several of these planted around the house. My brother and I used to play inside one of the larger ones, in fact. Actually, it is quite crazy that this plant is such a common ornamental. The berries, from what I have read, are edible. Actually, since this is not an angiosperm, these aren't true berries, just balloon-like extensions of the seed integument. The seed, however, is not edible. Also, inedible are the bark, the leaves, the wood, etc., etc. These parts of the plant contain an alkaloid called taxine. Which will kill you. Yes, it will kill you. Do not eat this plant. Do not make a tea out of it after you read some random account of a North American Indian group using if for medicine (who would not actually be using the European species anyway). Some of the chemicals in this genus, especially the North American Pacific Northwest species, are used in chemotherapy. But that should tell you something about the toxicity of this genus in general.


Anyway, as I was compiling these weekly additional plant sections, it dawned on me that I should use this opportunity to learn more about the desert flora in my new habitat. I'm pretty knowledgeable about plants east of the Mississippi as well as many tropical species. My closest knowledge of plants in the Sonoran desert is the Basin of Mexico, where there are some similar xerophytic plant communities. But other than going on random hikes around the valley, why not just look in my own back yard?

So the first plant for Part 1 of Ethnobotany of my yard is:

Brittlebush

Encelia farinosa L.

Asteraceae (dead give away that this plant is in this family: the flowers. They look like little sunflowers)

This is a small, dicot shrub that is common in open woodlands, coastal scrub, desert scrub, desert grasslands, and my yard.

From what I can determine based on some comparative and specific ethnobotanical texts, this plant has a range of uses, but most of them seem to focus either on its association with fire (i.e., as fuel, kindling, or incense) or on its role as an analgesic (pain killer). For example, Pima Indians used it as an analgesic and the resinous stems as kindling and incense. Similarly, the Cahuilla used it as a remedy for toothaches (Moreman 1998). I have yet to find its specific chemical components.

E. frutescens is a closely related species that the Navajo used to treat shingles, but they also smoked it with tobacco and used it as a seasoning. The actual Navajo name is directly translated as "red-headed red ant tobacco"  (Wyman and Harris 1951:47).


Moerman, Daniel E.
1998 Native American Ethnobotany. Timber Press, London.

Wyman, Leyland C., and Stuart K. Harris
1951 The Ethnobotany of the Kayenta Navaho. University of New Mexico Publications in Biology, No 5. The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.