How to get high legally in Portland, Ore.

Ayahuasca is the ethnomedicinal case study. First described scientifically in the 1950s by the pioneering ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard, it is a complex phychoactive decoction used in shamanistic ritual, whose preparation epitomizes the sophisticated botanical knowledge of Amazonian Amerindians. Schultes disciple and ethnobotanical pin-up boy Wade Davis has a great TED talk about it. I bring all this up because of a short article in Portland’s Mail Tribune, of all places, “Southern Oregon’s News Source.” It seems the local chapter of the Brazil-based Church of the Holy Light of the Queen has just been allowed by the federal court to go ahead and brew up some “Daime tea,” which is another name for ayahuasca. Strictly for sacramental purposes, you understand. But I like the cut of that judge’s jib.

Nibbles: Venezuela, Bangladesh, Climate change, Geographic indications, Dried herbs, Maize, Cydonia, Snakes, Hawaii, Pinot passion

Back to the wild

As promised, the new BGjournal is out, and the topic is “Ecological restoration and the role of botanic gardens.” Remember, this is the one with the paper on inter situ conservation:

One of the first places that this idea has caught on is on the properties of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) and those of collaborating landowners. At Lāwa’i-kai, the uniquely beautiful coastal property managed by NTBG as part of the historic Allerton Gardens on Kaua`i’s south shore, just a few kilometers from Makauwahi Cave, invasive vegetation has been removed from the beach strand and coastal forest and replaced with not just the three hardy native plant species that had persisted there, but dozens of other natives that cores collected from the adjacent marsh as well as the detailed record from other sites along the south shore such as Makauwahi shows were there when the Polynesians arrived a little more than a millennium ago.