Somewhere in the history of nearly every drug behind a counter, there is a rainforest plant. You just won’t find its name on the label. For roughly 400 years, chemists have been walking through the forests of Central and South America, asking the people who live there what a plant does, and walking out with a molecule. That molecule got a Latin name, a patent, and a price. The plant, and the Indigenous healers who explained it, mostly did not.
We’re not arguing against the molecules. But we do need to talk about memory. Who knew first? Who got the credit, and how many plants are still sitting in the “under investigation” column, under a microscope in a lab right now? One thing to be clear about before we get into the list: The story below is about pharmaceutical drugs that have been isolated and manufactured by chemists, tested and regulated as drugs. The original plants they came from are not those drugs. A cup of tea is not a molecule in a vial, and nothing in this historical overview is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Here are 11 rainforest plants traditional healers used before science “discovered” them.
Cinchona species grow on the eastern slopes of the Andes in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Quechua communities knew the bark, and by the 1630s Jesuit missionaries were carrying it to Europe, where it became known as “Jesuit's bark.” In 1820, the French chemists Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou isolated its active alkaloid and named it quinine. For the better part of three centuries, cinchona and then quinine anchored the global study of temperature and vitality, until synthetic alternatives began replacing them in the mid-twentieth century.
One correction to a popular version of this story: Pelletier and Caventou did not patent quinine. They published the method openly. The patents came later, and elsewhere.
Across the Amazon basin, Indigenous hunters, including the Macushi of Guyana, prepared curare from vines such as Chondrodendron tomentosum and used it on dart tips. In 1935, the chemist Harold King isolated d-tubocurarine from a museum specimen, and on January 23, 1942, Harold Griffith and Enid Johnson in Montreal used a purified curare preparation in an operating room for the first time. Nearly every neuromuscular blocking agent used in anesthesia today descends from that jungle hunting poison.
Andean peoples have chewed coca (Erythroxylum coca) for thousands of years. Albert Niemann isolated cocaine from it in 1860. In 1884, Carl Koller demonstrated it as a local anesthetic, and chemists spent the next decades designing safer versions: procaine, sold as Novocain, in 1905, and lidocaine in the 1940s. Under the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the coca leaf itself was placed under international control. The chemistry it inspired was not, nor were any profits or credit shared.
The name comes from Tupi and describes what the leaf does to the mouth: it makes you salivate. Brazilian Indigenous communities used Pilocarpus leaves for exactly that. Pilocarpine was isolated in the 1870s and studied for intraocular pressure since the same decade. In 1994, it was approved in tablet form to stimulate oral moisture. Jaborandi is still wild-harvested in Brazil for the pharmaceutical trade.
Carapichea ipecacuanha is a low shrub of the Brazilian Atlantic forest whose root was used by Tupi peoples as a purgative. It reached European pharmacies in the 1600s and stayed there for two centuries before Pelletier and François Magendie isolated emetine from it in 1817. Syrup of ipecac sat in American medicine cabinets for decades as a traditional emetic until 2003, when the American Academy of Pediatrics advised against keeping it at home. Modern pharmacy moved on. The plant didn’t change, only the Western physicians’ perspectives did.
Croton lechleri bleeds a dark red latex when cut, and Amazonian communities in Peru and Ecuador have used it for generations. In December 2012 the FDA approved crofelemer (Mytesi, originally Fulyzaq), a purified extract of that latex, as a prescription drug. It was the first oral botanical prescription drug approved in the United States. The entire pipeline, from ethnobotanical record to approved drug, happened within living memory. Some people reading this were alive for all of it, though many of the memory keepers are erased from its history.
Uncaria tomentosa is a woody vine of the Peruvian Amazon used by the Asháninka and other peoples for generations. Its bark contains oxindole alkaloids that researchers have studied for decades, mostly in laboratory models and a handful of small human studies. Cat’s Claw is a plant caught mid-transition: too studied to dismiss, not studied enough to be a patented drug. Science is still catching up to what Indigenous communities have long practiced.
Copaifera trees produce an oleoresin that Amazonian communities have applied for skin comfort since long before modern terms existed. Its major compound, beta-caryophyllene, is under study, mostly in preclinical models. Copaiba shows up today in both traditional preparations and modern topical formulas, which is the transition happening in real time.
The internet loves to call Annona muricata an answer for everything under the sun. The research says something more careful. Compounds from the plant, including annonacin and other acetogenins, have been studied in both laboratory and animal models. There are no human trials showing it does what the internet claims. And there is a documented reason for caution: annonacin is neurotoxic in animal studies, and researchers in Guadeloupe have raised concerns about heavy, long-term consumption of Annona fruit and tea. Still studying. Not yet true. Never a substitute for medical care. But traditional practitioners maintain that the tropical fruit provides nourishing compounds and essential antioxidants that support overall vitality.
Most people just walk past it. A note on geography first: Passiflora incarnata, the species in the pharmacopeias, is native to the southeastern United States, not the rainforest. The passionfruit vine, Passiflora edulis, is South American. The monographs belong to the first one. Indigenous peoples of the American Southeast used it, and later, Germany’s Commission E documented its use for nervous tension. The European Medicines Agency lists it as a traditional herbal preparation for daily stress and restful sleep. Researchers are still working out which of its flavonoids matter most. It is an approved traditional medicine in Europe.
Banisteriopsis caapi contains harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine. Psychotria viridis contains DMT. Brewed together by Shipibo-Konibo, Tukano and dozens of other Amazonian peoples, they form a ceremonial medicine that is centuries old at minimum. In 2019, a Brazilian team published the first randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of ayahuasca. What was once a sacred ceremony is now a clinical trial.
It is also a case study in credit. In 1986 an American, Loren Miller, was granted a U.S. plant patent on a B. caapi cultivar he called “Da Vine.” The Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) challenged it in 1999. The patent office cancelled it, then reinstated it in 2001, and it expired in 2003. A vine that Amazonian healers had cultivated for generations was, for 17 years, someone's intellectual property.
Who Got the Credit
Biopiracy is the word for what happens when a company or researcher takes traditional knowledge or genetic material from a community, turns it into a product, and returns nothing. The Nagoya Protocol, an international agreement in force since 2014, was written to address exactly this: it requires that benefits from using genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge be shared with the communities that provided them. The United States has never ratified it. Enforcement everywhere else is uneven, too.
Which leaves the real question. How many more plants are still “in research” right now, being investigated, extracted, verified or controlled, while the people who knew first go unnamed?
11 plants. 11 traditions. The chemists got the patents. The forests, and the healers who taught them, remain largely unrecognized. Adriana’s new book, The Rainforest Herbal Apothecary, was written to thoughtfully hold those names together: the plants, the peoples, and the practices. It’s the version of this story where the credit goes where it belongs.
From the Same Forests
No plant guarantees an outcome. These traditional preparations of plants, resins and elixirs come from the tropical rainforests and are organic, wildcrafted, and sourced with deep care, directly from the people who grow them.
Pau d’Arco (Handroanthus impetiginosus)
The inner bark of a flowering tree of the South American forest, Pau d’Arco has traditionally been brewed as a tea in Brazil and across the Amazon for generations.
Suma (Hebanthe eriantha)
Called Brazilian ginseng, though it is not a ginseng at all. A root traditionally used by Indigenous communities of the Amazon basin, and one of the workhorses of the rainforest apothecary.
Chanca Piedra (Phyllanthus niruri)
A small, unassuming herb of Peruvian and Brazilian folk tradition, harvested whole and taken as a traditional balancing infusion.
Bobinsana (Calliandra angustifolia)
A riverbank shrub of the Peruvian Amazon with pink, brush-like flowers, prepared by Shipibo healers as a plant ally. Adriana writes about it in the book as one of the most precious, heart-opening allies of the entire rainforest.
Copal (Bursera and Protium spp.)
The tree resin burned in ceremony across Mesoamerica since long before the Spanish arrived. The same copal, handmade by a Mexican co-op, is in the Curandera Box.
We’re so excited to finally share The Rainforest Herbal Apothecary with you—and to create ways for you to experience its teachings beyond the pages!
Alongside the book, we’ve created two special offerings inspired by the world Adriana shares within these pages. Each has been thoughtfully assembled around the plants, practices, and traditions at the heart of the book, offering a tangible way to connect with and carry these teachings into your own life.
Whether you’re drawn to the book on its own, want to begin with the Seed Offering Box, or feel called to go deeper with the Curandera Box, there is a way to meet this work that feels right for you. Below, you’ll find three ways to enter this work: the book, the Seed Offering, and the Curandera Kit.
Note: Preorder pricing is available through September 22. Books and boxes will ship between September 29 and October 6.
