Cup plant is quite an interesting plant. The plant’s leaves connect and form a cup
around the stem which holds water that is used by birds and insects. This of course makes me wonder about
mosquitoes, but as my favorite quote of the week goes: “It is what it is.” The web teaches me that the plant was used
for human food
(the young leaves seem to be ok, when cooked).
Furthermore, parts of the plant were used for medicinal purposes by some of
the Indian tribes. It appears to be able to treat everything
from chest pain to asthma to liver disease to excessive menstruation. Cup plant is high in various compounds that
may have value as medicine.
Interestingly, the plant I studied for my Ph.D. research (broom snakeweed
or Guiterrezia sarothrea) had some of
the same medicinal properties. I once
read that the Native Americans used broom snakeweed (which has some of the same
compounds as cup plants) for birth control (it causes abortions in livestock).
Plants hold a lot of secrets. They have compounds and combination of
compounds that can cure a person’s ailments or kill them. They produce compounds that prevent other
plants from growing nearby (also known as allelopathy or what I call
chemical warfare between plants). I have
always had an interest in allelopathy and the field of ethnobotany. As a Ph.D. student, I spent a week at
Stanford discussing the intricacies of who owns certain plants and the
chemicals in them. The question was if a
pharmaceutical company can patent a chemical in a plant that only grows in one
country, or if they would need to pay royalty.
The same is the case if they found a medicinal use by studying a native
tribe; would they have to pay royalty to the tribe from medicine they develop
as a result of that study? It is a fascinating
subject and fun to think about it again.
Anyway, it is also important to realize that when plants become
rare, or go extinct we might lose some very important properties that we have
not yet discovered.
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