Salvia Divinorum botanical description

ETHNOBOTANICAL DESCRIPTION: Perrenial 0,5-1m herb,with flowering stalks that can grow to 2 or 3 meters. The stalk is hollow with four angles and rough sides, translucent and slightly wrinkled. The leaves are opposite, can be elliptical or oval with a pointed or tailed top and a smoothed base and are 10-25 cm long and 5-10 cm in width, smooth on the lower part, and serrated on the edges.

Inflorescences in simple and erected 30 to 40 cm racemes; partial inflorescences with 3 to 6 flowers. Sessile floral hollow bracts, with round bases and tailed tops, 1-2 cm long and 0.6-1 cm wide, mostly violet. Violet, hairy, slim and upright peduncles that are 4-9mm long.

10-12 mm calyx with sub equal lobes, glandish pubescent, violet; 1.5mm upper lip with 3 obvious nervations. 28-32 mm corolla, slightly S shaped, white or slightly blue, smooth on the inside while hairy on the outside with translucent 0.5-2mm hairs; the corolla pipe is 19-22mm, 2mm by 1.5mm at the restraining in the fauces proximity; 8-9mm upper lip; hollow lower part, 5-7mm when flattened, trimmed margin lobes. Smooth, white, slightly bended 15-16mm stamen; whole 10-11 mm filaments; 2mm anthers, white pollen. 27-32 mm white stylus.
S. divinorum is used by the Mazateck indians in Oaxaca, Mexico as a shamanic inebriation; in Ethnographic literature, the first person to describe this usage, in 1939, was J.B Johnson, who noticed the use of Hierba Maria in matzateck witchcraft, along with mushrooms and morning glory grains in the art of divination (Johnson 1939).Roberto J.Wetlaner (1952) also described it as Yerba de María, however the true pioneer in shamanic studies, R.Gordon Wasson, was the fist to collect identifiable material and the first to experience it’s effects in Ayahutls, Oaxaca, on July 12th 1961.

Wasson had described the customary ingestion of leaves by the pair, known as Ska Patora o La Hembra, by chewing or swallowing them or by preparing a visionary potion through water infusion of the leaves and manual squeezing of the leaves as opposed to Weitlander’s description of their rubbing over the water (Wasson 1962; Weitlaner 1952).
Wasson had also photographed the usage of a metate for the infusion of the leaves (Hofmann 1990; Wasson 1963m 1966), mentioning a 6 to 68 leaf dose while Weitlander had reported 50 to 100 leaf dosages. Ott proposed a a pharmacological review of the leaves by analyzing the described doses through a dozen of various sources, from 6 to 240 leaves (Ott 1995b). Focusing on Wasson’s work, J.L. Díaz and L.J. Valdés conducted detailed botanical studies on the plant (Díaz 1975, 1977, 1979; Valdés 1983; Valdés and al. 1983, 1987a).

Even though the shamanic use of S. Divinorum has been observed outside the Sierra Mazateca region, Wasson suggested that the plant must have had some profound Mexican or Aztec origin, know in native nàhuatl as pipiltzintzintli, “the noblest of little princes” (Wasson 1963). Emboden had later noticed the presence of a drawing of the plant on the dress of a goddess in the maya Dresda Code (Emboden 1983).
Despite Valdés’s affirmation that S. Divinorum could not have been pipiltzintzintli (Aguirre Beltrán 1963; Díaz 1979; Valdés and al. 1987), the alternatives were not credible – the first, cannabis sativa was brought to Mexico after the Conquering (Schultes and Hofmann 1980), the second, Iololiuhqui (half coaxihuitl o Turbina corymbosa [L.] Raf.) had been identified by a pipiltzintzintli expert, Friar Agustin de Vetancurt, during his 1968 Teatro Mexicano , as a plant that seldom mixed with pipiltzintzintli (Vetancurt 1698).