Latua

Latua pubiflora (Griseb.) Baillon, (common name in Spanish: árbol de los brujos, tree of the sorcerers) is the single species of the monotypic genus Latua Phil., 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 its cultivation as an ornamental (with due care regarding toxicity). 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. 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. 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 Lan 'to die', tu, a causative particle, and hue 'the instrument with which something is done', giving the meaning 'that which causes (something) to die' i.