Wicked Plants Read Online Free

control of the coca supply, and when Spanish conquistadores arrived in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church banned the use of the devilish plant. Eventually, practical considerations won out, and the Spanish government realized that it would be better off regulating and taxing the use of coca, while making it available to slaves who had been forced to work in gold and silver mines. The Spaniards found that, with enough coca, the natives could work quickly, for long hours, with very little food. (Never mind the fact that most died after a few months of this treatment.)
    An Italian doctor named Paolo Mantegazza promoted the medicinal and recreational use of the leaves of the coca plant in the mid-nineteenth century. He was so enthralled by his discovery that he wrote: “I sneered at the poor mortals condemned to live in this valley of tears while I, carried on the wings of two leaves of coca, went flying through the spaces of 77,438 words, each more splendid than the one before . . .”
    Cocaine, an alkaloid that can be extracted from coca leaves, has been used as an anesthetic, a pain reliever, a digestive aid, and an all-around health tonic. Trace amounts were present in early versions of the soft drink Coca-Cola; while the company’s recipe is a closely guarded secret, coca extract is still believed to be a flavoring, just without the cocaine alkaloid. The leaves are legally imported by an American manufacturer, which buys it from Peru’s National Coca Company, transforms it into Coca-Cola’s secret flavoring, and extracts the cocaine for pharmaceutical use as a topical anesthetic.
    The coca plant’s ability to inspire humans to go to war, both against each other and against the plant, may be its most deadly quality.
    The coca plant’s ability to inspire humans to go to war, both against each other and against the plant, may be its most deadly quality. A healthy shrub can produce three crops a year of fresh, glossy leaves. The cocaine and other alkaloids in the leaves serve as a natural pesticide, helping to ensure that the plant flourishes even when it’s under attack. Although a few different species canbe used to extract cocaine, the plant used most often for this purpose is
Erythroxylum coca
, which grows along the eastern slope of the Andes mountain range.
    In native Andean communities, coca leaves are still chewed as a mild stimulant. Some pharmacological studies suggest that this provides a much milder and nonaddicting stimulation that works on a different part of the brain than cocaine does. The leaves are surprisingly nutritious and very high in calcium, prompting a minister in Bolivia’s new pro-coca government to suggest that instead of milk, coca leaves should be fed to schoolchildren.
    The shrub has also survived attacks from another kind of enemy: the drug war’s aerial spraying of the herbicide glyphosate. Drug eradication programs have been foiled by a new, resistant variety of coca called
Boliviana negra
. It emerged, apparently, without any help from scientists in laboratories. Instead, naturally resistant plants have simply been discovered in the fields and passed from farmer to farmer.
    Advocates of traditional coca farming point out that coca is an Andean crop dating back several thousand years, while cocaine was invented in Europe 150 years ago. The problems created by cocaine use, they suggest, should be solved within those countries and not at the expense of the coca plant.
    Meet the Relatives    
Erythroxylum coca
is the best-known member of this family of angiosperms, but
E. novagranatense
also contains the cocaine alkaloid.
E. rufum
, or false cocaine, can be found in some botanical gardens in the United States.

DANGEROUS

Coyotillo
    KARWINSKIA HUMBOLDTIANA
    Coyotillo is a modest shrub of the Texas plains, rarely reaching more than five or six feet in height. The bright green, untoothed leaves and pale green flowers make it an entirely forgettable shrub. But the round black