Damiana

Damiana is a small, woody shrub of the passionflower family, native from southern Texas through Mexico and Central America to South America and the Caribbean. Kynes gives it a height of up to six feet, with lance-shaped, coarsely toothed and deeply veined leaves and, at the tips of the branches, yellow flowers of five rounded petals. The true plant's leaves are small, greyish green and strongly aromatic when crushed, and its summer flowers are followed by fruits said to taste of figs. Much of the seed and many of the plants sold as damiana in the garden trade turn out to be a close relative, false damiana, though most herbal products are the genuine article. The Aztec, the Maya and other Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica used it as medicine and as an aphrodisiac, and the Guaycura of the Baja California peninsula made a ceremonial liquor from it. Its modern descendant, damiana liqueur, comes in a bottle shaped like a seated woman, and Mexican folklore claims it went into the very first margarita. In the nineteenth century it was an ingredient of patent medicines such as Pemberton's French Wine Coca. In hoodoo it is dedicated to Erzulie and used for love, luck and sex magic. Cunningham steeps it in lust infusions and burns it to bring on visions.