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Latua is a genus with one species, Latua pubiflora, a spiny evergreen shrub or small tree from the coastal mountains of southern Chile, grown mainly for its magenta-to-red, hummingbird-pollinated flowers. It is highly poisonous and should be handled with great caution.
Latua pubiflora (common name in Spanish: árbol de los brujos, lit. 'tree of the sorcerers') is the single species of the monotypic genus Latua, endemic to the coastal mountains of southern Chile. A shrub or small tree to 10 m in height, bearing attractive, magenta-to-red, hummingbird-pollinated flowers, it is extremely poisonous – hallucinogenic (deliriant) in smaller doses – due to tropane alkaloid content and is used by Chilean machi (shamans) of the Mapuche–Huilliche people in traditional medicine, as a poison and to enter trance states. Its elegant flowers and yellow tomato-like fruit are attractive enough to merit cultivation as an ornamental (despite the extreme toxicity).
The marked toxicity of Latua was noted frequently in the early literature on the plant.
...the plant grows only in the narrow coastal cordillera between Valdivia and Chiloé, a difficult mountainous terrain with an extremely wet climate and few roads; during the rainy season, the existing roads are nearly impassable.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Latua by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
