Medicinal Plants of the Guianas (Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana)

The Guianas are embedded high in the green shoulder of northern South America, an area once known as the “Wild Coast.” They are situated just north of the Equator in a configuration with the Amazon River of Brazil to the south and the Orinoco River of  Venezuela to the west. The three Guianas comprise, from west to east, the countries of  Guyana (area: 83,000 square miles; capital: Georgetown), Surinam (area: 63,251 square miles; capital: Paramaribo), and French Guiana (area: 35,135 square miles; capital: Cayenne).
Evidently the earliest physical contact between Europeans and the present-day Guianas occurred in 1500 when the Spanish navigator Vincente Yanez Pinzon, after discovering the Amazon River, sailed northwest and entered the Oyapock River, which is now the eastern boundary of French Guiana. As early as 1503 French colonists attempted to settle the island upon which Cayenne is built. Within the boundaries of today’s Guianas, the land was originally occupied by Amerindians of Carib and Arawak  language-families, and from the late 1500’s onwards was almost interchangeably settled by Spanish, British, Dutch, and French traders, adventurers, agriculturists and colonists. Gradually the land was sorted into areas controlled exclusively by either British, Dutch or French interests. The former British domains became independent on May 26, 1966 as the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, and the former Dutch domains became independent on November 25, 1975 as the Republic of Surinam. French Guiana became an Overseas Department of France in 1946 and is an integral part of France.

Many of the species of tropical medicinal plants utilized at present in the Guianaswere introduced in historical eras, and under circumstances, which seem the distance of auniverse away from the conditions that often prevail today. For a long time the NewWorld itself was only a vague vision. The earliest European acquaintance with tropicalvegetation had actually been the result of Alexander the Great’s invasion of northernIndia in 326 B.C., at which time the banyan tree (Ficus bengalensis) was first observedby the Western eyes of the conqueror’s Greek forces (Stearn, 1976, 1988; Desmond,1992). Information about the wondrous banyan fig tree with its dangling aerial rootsflowed back to Greece and was recorded by the classical Greek scholar Theophrastus.The impressive Indian vegetation was soon largely forgotten by Europe; indeed, theliterature was later sometimes suppressed for being of pagan (non-Christian) origin.The first travelers came to South America primarily in search of gold, spices, and new souls for the Church, for in the 16th century, the divine scheme of the universe was the redemption of sinners in a disobedient world prior to the second coming of Christ.Thus the discoverers, after praying to the Madonna of the Navigators for protection,sailed to bring news of “The Redeemer” to the “misguided” peoples of America.



It required many years to acknowledge the existence of South America and fit itinto the already established “triple-world” cosmography of Asia, Africa and Europe, an Medicinal Plants of the Guianas (Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana) ii essentially Mediterranean-oriented concept of the globe. A four-part world was gradually accepted in the 16th century, comprising the four great land masses of Asia (formerly one-half the world), Europe (formerly one-quarter of the world), Africa (formerly perceived to be one-quarter of the world), and America as a fourth continent often signified by theRiver Plate (now Argentina).As the existence of South America became recognized, the pace of scientificexplorations and discoveries quickened, leading to works such as Plantae Surinamenses (1775) by Carl Linnaeus’s Swedish pupil Jacob Alm (based on Surinam collections made by Carl Gustav Dalberg in 1754-1755 under a subvention from Gustav III, King of Sweden), and the  Histoire des Plantes de la Guiane Francoise by Fusee Aublet,published also in 1775. The Amerindians indigenous to the Guianas in the 1700’s lived in relative ecological harmony with their forested surroundings and had a rather thorough knowledge of the use of plants. In contrast, the first Europeans in the area often felt themselves imprisoned in an impenetrable and meaningless green blanket, as they eked out a living from the forest.The perceived role of man in the forest was early studied and influenced by the famous French naturalist, Count George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707-1788), who produced in 44 volumes the encyclopedic
 Histoire Naturelle (published in Paris, 1749-1804). Buffon was the intendant (supervisor) of the Jardin du Roi in Paris from 1739-1788; during his tenure the South American expedition of C.-M. de la Condamine discovered, among many other things, a species of rubber, Hevea guianensis, in FrenchGuiana. Buffon was deeply interested “in the changes which men had made in their natural environment, particularly the transformation which had accompanied the growth and expansion of civilization and the migration and dispersion of human beings and their domesticated plants and animals throughout the habitable parts of the earth” (Glacken,1960).In the days of Buffon (long before the ‘greenhouse effect” was understood), many people believed that Nature is of divine origin and must be improved and arranged byMan, who is also of divine origin. This led to several erroneous theories, including the idea that humanity must aid Nature by changing it through deforestation so that more of the sun’s heat could warm the earth’s surface, and compensate for the heat lost due to the cooling of the earth. Thus, Buffon’s studies of the physical effects of man’s intervention in the world environment led him to consider the climatic changes that occurred as a result of land-clearing, agriculture and drainage, as being in a beneficial context.Buffon’s viewpoint, as expressed by Glacken (1960), was that, for 3,000 years,“Flowers, fruits, grains, useful species of animals have been transported, propagated, and increased without number; useless species of animals have been eliminated. Mining has advanced. Torrents have been restrained and the rivers directed and controlled. The seahas been conquered. Land has been restored and made fertile.” He believed, for example,that France would be much colder than it is, if its forests had not been cut. Unfortunately,for partial proof of this theory he chose to indicate “the deforestation, scarcely a centurye arlier, of a district around Cayenne (there are many references to French Guiana throughout the
 Histoire Naturelle), which caused considerable differences in air temperature, even at night, between the cold, wet, dense forest into which the sun seldompenetrated and the clearings; rains even began later and stopped earlier in them(clearings) than in the forest” (Glacken, 1960). A similar theory pertained regarding theSt. Lawrence valley in North America (also with French settlements): “The theory wasthe forests held the cold; once the land was cleared and brought into cultivation, the climate would then become like that of France” (Dickason, 1984).An article on forest conservation was published by Count Buffon in 1739, as he also believed that deforestation could be reconciled with conservation under certain locally mitigating circumstances. Essentially, he felt that “large areas inimical to man had to be cleared to make the earth habitable, but once societies were established on them, the forests were resources which had to be treated with care and foresight.”The pressing need for environmental conservation in the three Guianas has been addressed by numerous researchers including Lindeman & Mori (1989); and for Guyanaby Sullivan (1990), Pearce (1990, 1992) and Clark et al. (2001); for Surinam by Boxmanet al. (1987) and Mittermeier et al. (1990); and as well for French Guiana by the publications of Clavel, Profizi & Sallee (1978), de Granville (1975), Sastre (1980) and Wencelius (1984). The judicious exploitation of indigenous medicinal plant resources following careful inventorying of species and habitats in the Guianas will hopefully assist the economic development of the region. Much conservation work in the Guianas is currently sponsored by the Biological Diversity of the Guianas Program of theSmithsonian Institution, and by the Amazon Conservation Team headed by ethnobotanistMark Plotkin. As the Europe of earlier times became intrigued by the human inhabitants of theNew World, the Amerindians were gradually incorporated to an extent into European culture. The famous natural historian Alexander von Humboldt, for example, noted in theearly 1900’s that “when we speak in Europe of a native of Guiana, we figure to ourselvesa man whose head and waist are decorated with the fine feathers of the macaw, thetoucan and the hummingbird. Our painters and sculptors have long since regarded theseornaments as the characteristic marks of an American” (Honour, 1975).Inevitably, New World plants were destined to play a much more important rolein European like than would American tribal peoples and wildlife. Useful plants of NewWorld origin sent to Europe from 1493 onwards included maize (Indian corn), tobacco,sweet potatoes, tomatoes, vanilla, cotton, chocolate, red peppers and pineapples. Otherplants, such as annatto, performed several different functions.The annatto plant,  Bixa orellana , which is sometimes used for medicinal purposesin the Guianas, produces a seed from which a food-coloring paste is derived. Formerlythe plant was intensively cultivated on plantations in French Guiana as a source of redfabric dye from the seeds. In the year 1752, for example, exports of Bixa from French Guiana amounted to 260,541 pounds, which outweighed the colony’s combined production that year of sugar, cotton, coffee, cacao and timber. All of that produce wasthe result of labor from 90 French families, 125 Amerindian slaves and 1,500 black slaves (Rodway, 1912). In 1772, a half-Scots soldier in Suriname, Captain John Stedman, encountered a liberally Bixa -painted Indian from cayenne, and asked him why he waspainted red. The Indian replied, in French, that he painted himself red because the substance keeps his skin soft, prevents excess perspiration, is a good mosquito repellant,and it is a beautiful color. He then asked Stedman why he was painted white! Apparently,Stedman was following the current European fashion of powdering one’s hair with flour,which had sifted down onto his shoulders (Van Lier, 1972; see also Collis, 1965 andPrice & Price, 1990).True to the spirit of the famous Netherlands Golden Age of seaborne mercantilism, trading and investment (Koningsberger, 1967; Schama, 1987), Surinam itself was administered as a business enterprise. In the year 1684 the society of shareholders, each owning one-third of the Surinam trade, consisted of the Dutch WestIndia Company; the City of Amsterdam; and the private possession of the family Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijk (Heniger, 1987). A number of the Society of Suriname directors were also directors of the Dutch East India Company, and commissioners of theAmsterdam Hortus Medicus, or botanical garden.Consequently a strong interrelationship of plant exchanges developed betweenSurinam, the Dutch East Indies, and the Amsterdam garden (Wijnands, 1987; Stearn,1988A). Cornelius van Sommelsdijk, the Governor of Surinam residing in Paramaribo,received from the Amsterdam garden various plants such as mulberry trees, peach trees,pomegranates and rhubarb, to be propagated on the plantations. In return, Surinam plantssoon arrived in Holland, such as Canna indica in 1687 and the tree-cactus Cereus hexagonus in 1689. The introduction of Surinam plants to the Netherlands has been accorded extensive study by Brinkman (1980), and the Dutch transatlantic trade in medicinal plant materials from areas including Surinam has been researched by Rutten(2000). Also, the Dutch botanist Nahuys in Utrecht exchanged seeds and plants withAndre Thouin, head gardener at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, in the late Eighteenth Century(Spary, 2000).The wild Caladium bicolor(Araceae), which has medicinal uses in the Guianas,was sent from Surinam to the Amsterdam botanical garden in 1704; at least 1,500cultivars (cultivated varieties) of this decorative plant have subsequently been developed.In Surinam, coffee was first planted in 1711 and exported in 1721; cacao was first planted in 1700 and first exported to Holland in 1706; and cotton was first cultivated on a largescale in 1763 (Van Lier, 1972). A ship’s captain introduced pineapple plants ( Ananascomosus) from Surinam to the Amsterdam and Leiden botanical gardens in 1680, and mass plantings under glass began on Netherlands estates in 1700 (Wijnands, 1983).Pineapples are today occasionally used for medicine in the Guianas, and a beautiful rendering of the plant is found in the 1705 book by Maria Sibylla Merian, a famousDutch artist who traveled to Surinam to study tropical insects. Her sumptuous volume isentitled Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium ; several of the illustrations (plates)have been designated as the “type” for Surinam plant species, e.g.,Hippeastrum puniceum and  Manihot esculenta (Anonymous, 1962; Engle, 1988; Rice, 1999; Stearn,1982; Welebit, 1988;

Certain pineapple plants which differed from the ordinary by having leaves with adesirable smooth (not spiny) margin were sent from Cayenne, French Guiana to France in1820 and grown at Versailles. This ‘Smooth Cayenne’ cultivar later became the basis of the formidable Hawaiian pineapple industry, for in 1886 Captain John Kidwell planted1,000 crowns of ‘Smooth Cayenne’ in Hawaii to establish large-scale cultivation of thefruit.The first plant collector in French Guiana was Pierre Barrere (1690-1755), who asearly as the years 1722-1725 botanized along the coastal area in his capacity as“medecin-botaniste du roi” in Cayenne (Vermeulen, 1985). He was later followed byJ.B.C.F. Aublet (1720-1778) who collected plants from 1762-1764 as “apothicaire-botaniste du roi” in Cayenne (Bernardi, 1976; Howard, 1983; Zarucchi, 1984; Plotkin,Boom & Allison, 1991). Further explorations were carried out by Jean-Baptiste Patris,another “medecin-botaniste” from 1764-1786 (Chaia, 1970). Empress Josephine of France, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, assembled a large collection of plants from aroundthe world in her garden at Malmaison, a chateau about seven miles west of Paris (David,1966; Lamb, 1001; Mauguin, 1933). Plants were sent to her from French Guiana byJoseph Martin, director of a national spice plantation at La Gabrielle, 20 km south of Cayenne (Ly-Tio-Fane, 1991). During the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, two British privateers captured a French ship laden with 140 tubs of living plants which had beengathered during six years of work in French Guiana by Mr. Martin.Martin was aboard the ship, accompanying the plants that were intended forJosephine’s garden and the Paris Natural History Museum. In England, even theinfluence of Sir Joseph Banks, who wanted to send the plants forward to Josephine, wasnot successful and three barges dragged the plants up the Thames River, to be planted atthe Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The plants did not survive and the unfortunate prisonerMr. Martin was repatriated to France, never to see the fruits of his labor again (Stearn &Williams, 1957). Martin is commemorated by the plant named  Bignonia martini A.P. De Candolle (Bignoniaceae) and several other species.In the Indian Ocean, the French King’s Garden on Mauritius provided Cayenne with seedlings of two precious spices, clove and nutmeg, in hopes of breaking the Dutchmonopoly of the spice trade in the late 1770’s (Duval, 1982; Ly-Tio-Fane, 1982). Asnoted by Howard (1953), “with seeds or plants, new plantations could be established in other areas of the world and new supplies of spices obtained for the markets of Europe.”In 1791, French Guiana supplied nutmeg plants to the St. Vincent Botanic Garden in theWest Indies, and it is believed that all the nutmegs so important in the economy of St.Vincent, and Trinidad, are progeny of those originally introduced from French Guiana(Howard, 1954).One of the first British adventurers to exert influence in the Guianas was SirWalter Raleigh, Captain of the Guard to Queen Elizabeth I. Led on by samples of marcasite of dubious origin, he went searching for the site of lost gold mines said to be ina fabled new empire, which supposedly had furnished the golden walls of the PeruvianInca’s Palace of the Sun. The mines were thought to be at the golden city of Manoa,called by the Spanish “El Dorado”, beside a certain Lake Parima (Lacey, 1973). Raleigh Valiant, 1992)twice visited the Orinoco River region of the then Spanish Guiana (now Venezuela), in1595 and 1617 (Lacey, 1973; Nicholl, 1995; Rowse, 1962; Waldman, 1950; Winton,1975). On the 1617 trip he traveled under the auspices of King James I, a monarch whowas £700,000 in debt and had been promised the gold mines in return for supportingRaleigh. After he reached the Oyapock River (French Guiana), Raleigh went ashore atCayenne for a feast of roasted mullet and armadillo.Today, it is realized (Hills, 1961) that the legendary Lake Parima sought byRaleigh is actually Lake Amuku, a “wet weather lake” in the northern savannas, north of the Kanuku Mountains in Guyana. The lake is intermittently formed by annual inundationof the Rupununi savannas by the adjacent rivers, and is thus a “disappearing” lake whichexists only at intervals. Raleigh was often cited as the first person to record in Europeanliterature (in 1595) the existence of curare, a paralytic, plant-derived poison used infishing and hunting by the Amerindians. Curare causes death by asphyxiation, the loss of control of muscles essential in respiration. The distinction of the first mention of curare inEuropean writings is now accorded to Pieter Martyr d’Anglera around the year 1500(McIntyre, 1947; Thomas, 1963). Curare is of two kinds, based either on Strychnos (Loganiaceae) or on plants of the Menispermaceae (Krukoff & Moldenke, 1938; Schultes& Raffauf, 1990). The kind known as tube-curare is prepared from several genera (e.g., Chondodendron ) of the moonseed family (Menispermaceae); purified extracts of thedextrorotatory form of tubocurarine, a chemical from the bark and leaves, is used inmodern medicine as a muscle relaxant for shock treatment of mental illness, and as anadjunct to anaesthesia in heart surgery.The paralyzing effects of curare samples obtained in Peru in 1742 by the Frenchscientist and explorer C.-M. de la Condamine (1701-1774) were first demonstrated byhim in Cayenne, French Guiana, and later in Leiden, Holland (Earles, 1963). UsingSurinam plants, Johann C.D. von Schreber in 1783 was the first person to describeprecisely which plant species enter into the composition of curare; later, Richard andRobert Schomburgk identified certain plant components of the curare prepared by theMacusi people of Guyana. Ironically, it was not until the explorations of the Schomburgk brothers in the 1830’s that the legendary city of Manoa so diligently sought by Raleighwas finally proved to be non-existent.Numerous medicinal plants are actually multiple-purpose plants which can beemployed in several ways at the same time, without invoking the statement by the Puritandivine and clergyman Cotton Mather (1663-1728), who entreated: “That which is notuseful is vicious.” In addition to being sources of medicine and drugs (herbalpreparations), some are also ornamentals and variously used as well for food (fruits,storage roots, stems, leaves), fiber, oil, shade providers, fencing material or as livingfences, timber, veneer wood, and fuel wood or firewood. The coconut palm (
Cocos nucifera) is but one good example of a multiple-use medicinal plant of the Guianas.In the old colonial days, some planted trees in Georgetown, Guyana were utilizedfor fire and disease prevention. The trees lining the streets and avenues were useful inpreventing fire from spreading from one house to another. Unlike some trees of northernclimates, certain tropical broadleaf trees do not ignite unless the heat first dries them thoroughly. As for disease prevention, the planted trees were important agents in drainingpools of stagnant water with their roots; stagnant water was the breeding place formosquitoes transmitting yellow fever, malaria and elephantiasis.In addition to indigenous medicinal plants, the Guianas are home to myriads of medicinal plants introduced from the tropical zones of Central and South America, theWest Indies, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands. Biologically, these plants may be climatically adapted to a seasonality whereby in dry seasons the leaves aredropped and flowers are produced; other plants may appear to be continually evergreen(Bernhardt, 1987; Kingdon-Ward, 1956; Lewis, 1989). This phenomenon is due to their evolutionary adaptation in a particular region, often foreign, where the climatic combination of temperature, rainfall and humidity may be either somewhat different than,or the same as, in the Guianas. The answer (at least partial) to the seeming compatibility or incompatibility of introduced plants in a new region may be sought in the study of homologous habitats or environments in different regions of the world, as demonstrated by the writings of V.M. Meher-Homji (1964, 1964A, 1965, 1971, 1971A; cf. also Bharucha & Meher-Homji, 1965, and Uichanco, 1969).General information on the diversity and potential of tropical medicinal plants,and the chemical basis of their activity, is contained in the works of Blackwell (1990),Seidl et al. (1995), Kaufman et al. (1999), and Downum et al. (1993). Examples of ethnobotanical studies of medicinal plants utilized by various Amerindian tribes in theGuianas include Plotkin (1986, 1994) on the Tirio and Wayana of Surinam; Tiwari(1999) on the Patamona, the least acculturated Indians of Guyana; and Grenand et al.(1987) on the Palikur and Wayapi of French Guiana. Dr. D.G.L. Kingston and collaborators (Kingston et al., 1999; Yang et al., 1999) have been undertaking laboratory analyses of the potential medicinal plants of Surinam.


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