Rare, endemic tree of southern Chile's temperate rainforest, the only member of its genus. Contains scopolamine and hyoscyamine. Used historically by Mapuche machis (shamans) in southern Chile — feared and revered as a tree of madness, vision, and witchcraft.
Restricted to a narrow band of temperate rainforest in the Cordillera de la Costa between roughly Valdivia and Chiloé in southern Chile.
The names this organism has been given by the cultures that have lived alongside it. Each carries an entire relationship — what is sacred is never simply translated.
- latuéMapudungun (Mapuche)
- Mapuche machi (shaman) practice — divination, judgement, sometimes harm-doing
- Said to have been used to induce madness in enemies — a darker thread within the Mapuche pharmacopeia
Latua entered Western awareness almost entirely through Mapuche sources and the work of Carlos Plowman in the 1970s. Its small range and association with bewitchment kept it from being widely propagated; it remains genuinely rare in cultivation.
- Plowman 1971
