Volume 24, Issue 2, March–April 2014, Pages 153–158
Open Access
Original article
Documentation of the medicinal knowledge of Prosthechea karwinskii in a Mixtec community in Mexico
- Open Access funded by Sociedade Brasileira de Farmacognosia
- Under a Creative Commons license
Abstract
In
Mexico, native orchids are appreciated for their ornamental value and
traditional uses and in many indigenous communities they comprise part
of a biocultural heritage. The orchid Prosthechea karwinskii
(Mart.) J.M.H. Shaw, Orchidaceae, is particularly relevant in this
context, although some of its traditional uses have been attributed to a
very similar species, P. citrina. A recent study of P. karwinskii
reported unknown medicinal and other traditional uses by the Mixtec
community in Mexico. Unfortunately, increasing acculturation of
indigenous communities has resulted in a loss of the community's
traditional knowledge, thus, we herein documented the worldview and
practices associated with the medicinal use of P. karwinskii as
well as the socioeconomic aspects that characterize the holders of this
knowledge. People with this knowledge are mainly indigenous women with
little or no schooling, who learned the medicinal practices from family
tradition. They use pseudobulbs, leaves, or flowers of the plant to
treat coughs (infusions), wounds and burns (poultices), diabetes (tea or
chewed), to prevent miscarriages and to assist in childbirth
(infusions). These results show a promising future for
ethnopharmacological research on P. karwinskii.
Keywords
- Ethnobotany;
- Medicinal plants;
- Oaxaca;
- Traditional knowledge;
- Traditional medicine
Introduction
Medicinal
plants are the most important traditional therapeutic resource of many
indigenous communities where access to health services is scarce or
nonexistent. In many cases, the virtues of these plants are based on
empirical practices dating from ancient times. In some cases these have
been confirmed by current pharmacology (Viesca, 1993).
In many cases, knowledge regarding these practices is verbal,
maintained and transmitted among few people, scarcely accessible to
others, and rarely incorporated into formal studies. For this reason, it
is important to document this information before it is lost due to
processes of acculturation or cultural erosion suffered by indigenous
people (Argueta and Aguilar, 1993, Sanfilippo, 1993, Naranjo, 1995, Pardo-Santayana and Gomez-Pellon, 2002, Reyes-Garcia et al., 2004 and Boege and Chan, 2008).
In
Oaxaca, Southern Mexico, the Mixteca is a region inhabited by people of
Mixtec and Triqui ethnicities, for whom the native surrounding plants
have traditional uses and are part of their biocultural heritage (Boege and Chan, 2008).
Such plants include orchids, appreciated for their ornamental,
medicinal and ceremonial value, and are also used as edible herbs (Hagsater et al., 2005, Solano et al., 2010 and Cruz-Garcia, 2013). A particularly valued orchid in the Mixteca is Prosthechea karwinskii
(Mart.) J.M.H. Shaw, Orchidaceae, endemic to Southern Mexico where it
grows as an epiphyte in oak or pine- oak forests, this plant has showy
yellow flowers with a very pleasant aroma.
The use of P. karwinskii
in traditional medicine has not been previously reported. Until
recently, this orchid was confused with its sister species, another
Mexican endemic orchid known as P. citrina (La Llave and Lex.)
W.E. Higgins; it is a very similar species, so in the past the available
information for the first was invariably attributed to the second. In
the present study we agree with Pridgeon et al. (2005) and Soto et al. (2007) on including both species in Prosthechea genus and not in Euchile, which is synonym of the first, according to these authors. The literature reports few medicinal uses for P. citrina or any of its synonyms (Cattleya citrina, Encyclia citrina, Euchile citrina, Epidendrum citrinum, or Sobralia citrina). Francisco Hernández, a Spanish physician who visited Mexico in mid-16th century illustrated an orchid named cozticoatzontecoxochitl by the Aztecs, which means “yellow pendant flower snake-like” ( Hernandez, 1959). This plant was used by Aztec doctors to heal infected wounds. Urbina (1903) identified Hernandez's drawing as Cattleya citrina. Garcia-Peña and Peña (1981), Hagsater et al. (2005), and Ossenbach (2005) reported that poultices were the way in which this plant was used to heal wounds.
Regarding other traditional uses for P. karwinskii, Hagsater et al. (2005)
described the “agua de gloria” (glory water) prepared in the Mixteca of
Oaxaca, which is a scented water made with flowers of this orchid used
at processions during Easter. Moreover, Solano et al. (2010)
indicated that during Easter, in several towns from Oaxaca, people
create elaborate ornaments with these flowers and these are placed in
churches, streets and homes. Cruz-Garcia (2013)
mentioned that in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, this orchid is used for ceremonial
and food purposes, as an inspiration for artistic expressions, and is
used to treat several diseases or conditions in traditional medicinal
practices. Given that there was previously not known medicinal use for
this orchid, and as the process of globalization and acculturation is
becoming more common in indigenous communities causing the loss of
traditional knowledge, the purpose of this work was to document the
remaining medicinal and traditional knowledge of P. karwinskii of the people from Tlaxiaco.
Materials and methods
This
study was conducted in the municipality of Tlaxiaco (17°16’ North
latitude, 97°41’ West longitude, 2040 m elev.), one of the most
important settlements in the Mixteca of Oaxaca, Mexico. A previous study
in the community documenting the traditional knowledge of Orchidaceae
in this zone (Cruz- Garcia, 2013) recorded two of the 37 orchid species
sold there as medicinal, P. karwinskii (Mart.) J.M.H. Shaw, Orchidaceae, and P. michuacana
(La Llave and Lex.) W.E. Higgins. The latter is used to treat kidney
problems while the first has more medicinal uses that are herein
documented.
Much of the
traditional knowledge about wild plants prevails in people for whom
these are a resource. Keeping this in mind, weekly visits (every
Saturday) were made between September 2011 and August 2012 to the
Tlaxiaco's market and tianguis (a weekly open-air street
market) in which a total of 56 orchid dealers were identified. All of
them agreed to answer a semi-structured questionnaire (see format in
Annex 1) and participate in an open-ended interview about the medicinal
uses for the orchids that they sold, following Martin (2000) and Albuquerque and Lucena (2004). However, only three dealers were able to provide information for P. karwinskii.
Three more informants were located and interviewed in the Hospital of
the Organization of Indigenous Physicians of the High Mixteca (OMIMA,
for its Spanish acronym), and the municipal headquarters of the
Commission for Development of Indigenous People (CDI for its Spanish
acronym). Using techniques such as participant observation, free
listings, and open-ended interviews, information about non-medicinal
uses for this orchid was obtained, which is also herein documented. Each
informant consented to the publication of the information provided,
however their names remain anonymous to ensure their privacy and dignity
as well as to avoid possible effects resulting from the research, in
accordance with the guidelines of the Research Ethics Committee of the
National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubiran
(INNSZ, 2014), which in turn are based on the Helsinki Declaration of
the World Medical Association (WMA, 2014). Some specimens were acquired
from interviewed sellers; they were pressed, taxonomically determined by
one of the researchers (RS), and deposited in the OAX herbarium of the
National Polytechnic Institute (IPN for its Spanish acronym).
Annex 1 Interview format for informants of orchids’ medicinal uses.
The
questionnaire and interview were focused on the following three topics:
i) the worldview associated with the traditional knowledge and
practices using orchids; ii) the socio- economic aspects that
characterize people who maintain this knowledge (age, gender, schooling,
knowledge of an indigenous language, occupation, place of origin and
means by which knowledge was acquired); and iii) the diseases or
conditions for which P. karwinskii is employed, part of the plant used, preparation method, doses used, and characteristics of people to whom it is recommended.
Results and discussion
Socioeconomic aspects of informants
Chart 1
summarizes the socio-economic data of the informants interviewed. Only
six respondents provided information about medicinal uses for Prosthechea karwinskii (Mart.) J.M.H. Shaw ( Fig. 1),
Orchidaceae, the rest of respondents either did not have any medicinal
information or it was about another species. Regarding the informants
who had knowledge about medicinal uses of this orchid, four of them were
women and two were men. All of them were middle-aged or elderly adults,
whose age ranged from 45 to 83 years. Five of them live in Tlaxiaco and
one in a nearby village. In terms of schooling, two women did not have
any formal instruction, one woman had three years of elementary school
and the fourth woman completed elementary school. In contrast, both men
had completed high school. Two of the women work in the orchid trade as
their main economic activity, one is a housewife, and the other is a
cook. One of the men is a teacher and the other works in a restaurant.
The two women who lack schooling speak the native language of the
region, Mixtec, in addition to Spanish, whereas the rest of the
informants only speak Spanish. Finally, regarding the mode of
acquisition of traditional medicinal knowledge, three women learned it
from their mothers and the rest from a father, grandmother or
grandfather.
- Chart 1.Socioeconomic data from informants who provided information regarding the medicinal uses for Prosthechea karwinskii.F, female; M, male; PES, primary elementary school; SES, secondary elementary school; HS, high school; NS, no schooling; S, spanish; M, mixtec. The number of years of schooling is in parentheses.
- Figure 1.Prosthechea karwinskii in its habitat. Photo by R. Solano.
Worldview
If
worldview is understood as the people's conception of the natural and
social environment that surrounds them and from which traditions that
are shared, transmitted and sometimes modified to be part of the local
culture are derived, then, in the Mixteca of Oaxaca, as it is an
important component of their forests and an element present in many
manifestations of the regional culture, orchids are part of the Mixtec's
worldview.
