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That Confounded Winter's Bark
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Several plants from temperate Chile are familiar to us though their introduction into British gardens. Among them Winter's bark (Drimys winteri) belongs to a small number of now ornamental plants that are still known by the name of the popular drugs originally derived from them.  

This article outlines the first arrival of the medicinal drug Cortex Winteranus (Winter's bark) into this country following Francis Drake's circumnavigation.  Its subsequent use as a treatment for scurvy was to determine shipping routes around the tip of South America. No description of Winter's bark can be complete with outlining the deep meaning this tree has in the native Mapuche culture of Chile.

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Herbs, the journal of the Herbs Society, 39.2, 2014.

Picture
Click on image to open file.

" ...The distinctive Mapuche stepped altars, rewe, are traditionally carved from its wood; in ritual a machi climbs it as a means of transportation towards
​the heavenly cosmos. ...
"

Mapuche rewe. Photo: Musée du Quai Branly.
Drimys andina. Photo: Medicinal Worlds.
Archive image of Mapuche (rewe at rear). Photo: Biblioteca Chile.
Rewe and planted Winter's bark sapping. La Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile. Photo: Lin linao.

" ... Clusius had named one exotic specimen after Drake (Radix Drakena, Drake’s root), but christened the useful bark, Cortex Winteranus, Winter’s bark. ..."

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Winter's bark (Drimys winteri) Singleton Park, Swansea. Photo: Medicinal Worlds.
Cortex Winteranus. Clusius 'Aliquot notae in Garciae Aromatum Historiam', Antwerp 1582,
A portrait of Carolus Cluisus. 16th century.
A recipe from'The modern practice of the London hospitals' 1770.


Banner image: A meeting in 1991 of Mapuche with the then President of Chile and 
his ministers. 
​They and the seated Mapuche shamans (machi
) are holding 
Winter's bark leaves as a traditional symbol of peace.
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Related articles:


The Liquidambar Kaleidoscope.
The Obliging Manna Ash



Most viewed pages, January 2019:

Elizabeth Blackwell Curious Herbal Curious Tale
The Obliging Manna Ash
John Keats page
That Confounded Winter's Bark
Weeds & Wildflowers Caroline Lucas
Robert Fortune & China
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