Velvet Bean

Mucuna pruriens, the velvet bean, is a tropical legume native to Africa and tropical Asia and widely naturalised and cultivated. Its other names include monkey tamarind, cowage, cowitch, lacuna bean and Lyon bean. The page calls it notorious for the extreme itchiness it causes on contact, particularly from the young foliage and the seed pods, whose loose orange hairs contain serotonin and the protein mucunain and are used in some itching powders. It is an annual climbing shrub with vines over fifteen metres long, with white, lavender or purple flowers and pods carrying up to seven shiny black or brown seeds. The seeds contain L-DOPA and tryptamines including DMT and bufotenin. It is used as forage, fallow and green manure, the beans are eaten in Indonesia as benguk, and the plant and its extracts have long been used in tribal communities as a snakebite antidote.