Hopi Tea

What’s blooming in the area: Tea and miniature roses, winterfat, datura, Heavenly Blue and ivy-leaf morning glories, bindweed, trumpet creeper, honeysuckle, silver lace vine, purple phlox, bouncing Bess, bigleaf globemallow, blue vervain, mullein, white sweet clover, sweet pea, velvetweed, yellow and white evening primrose, scarlet beeblossom, silverleaf nightshade, alfilerillo, goats head, toothed spurge, stickleaf, pigweed, amaranth, ragweed, goldenrod, wild lettuce, horseweed, goats beard, African marigold from seed, áñil del muerto, Hopi tea, gumweed, spiny and hairy golden aster, tahokia daisy, farmers, garden, plains and native sunflowers, cocklebur, sand bur, corn, redtop, barn and muhly ring grass; milkweed pods formed; buds on skunkbush; sweet corn for sale; both alfalfa and smooth brome hay being cut with whatever else was growing in the fields.
What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Golden spur columbine, coral beardtongue, hartweig, squash, chocolate flower, fern-leaf yarrow, blanket flower, coreopsis, anthemis, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hat, perky Sue, chrysanthemum, yellow cosmos.
Looking east: Floribunda rose, hosta, crimson climber morning glory, large-leaf soapwort, coral bells, ipomopsis, California poppy, garlic chives, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, pink salvia, pink evening primrose, Jupiter’s beard, sweet alyssum from seed, sedum, Maximilian sunflower, cutleaf coneflower, zinnias from seed.
Looking south: Rose of Sharon, rugosa and Blaze roses, tamarix, Illinois bundle flower, Sensation cosmos.
Looking west: Caryopteris, buddleia, Russian and Rumanian sage, catmint, perennial four o’clock, flax, David phlox, leadplant, purple ice plant, white spurge, sea lavender, purple coneflower, Mönch aster; yucca seed pods splitting open.
Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, moss rose, Dahlberg daisy, French marigold, gazania, tomato.
Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, bougainvillea.
Animal sightings: Gecko, hummingbirds in trees, monarch butterflies, bees, ladybug, brick red grasshopper, 50 some small black ant hills appeared outside my gate.
Weather: Rained several times last Sunday, near arroyo was running; morning temperatures since have fallen into upper 50's, but afternoons still reached upper 80's with wind. 13:48 hours of daylight today.
Weekly update: My need to know what’s growing around me began with a woody vine exploiting the area between neighbors’ fences in Michigan. I cut it back on my side with no harm, then touched the arm of a friend and left a rash. It turned out to be poison ivy, not in the "three leaves with red stems sprawling on the ground" phase, but something more akin to wild grapes.
Now when I walk along the roadside, it’s not simply because I’m curious about what’s blooming. I want to know the barbarians at the gates in all their stages, so if an undesirable volunteers, I’ll recognize it before its roots get too deep to remove.
Luckily, Hopi tea wouldn’t be a nuisance, because its young definitely would be difficult to detect. The composite has stripped itself to the barest essentials, produces only disk flowers and the scantiest of curling, blue-grey leaves on wiry, one to two foot stems. The yellow flowers are closed by mid-morning, unless it’s cloudy. Most of the time, all I see are tightened petals darkened by rust-colored veins, empty brown sepals, and reddish seed capsules.
Thelesperma megapotamicum grows in the intermontane west and arid great plains as far north as Montana in this country and down through Chihuahua and Coahuila to Zacatecas. A tea made from dried plants is one of the few foods common to nearly every pueblo, from the Hopi in the west to the nearby Tewa-speaking Santa Clara, and many Keres speakers between, including the Cochiti, Santo Domingo, Laguna, and Acoma..
The mild, slightly astringent drink spread to the invading Navajo and Apache, where the first also used ch’il awhéhé root to dye wool a yellowish-orange. The Hopi used ho hoysi flowers to stain yucca fibers a reddish brown for baskets, and it’s been used as a colorante in northern Mexico.
When the Spanish arrived several centuries later they adopted cota, usually with sugar. In 1997, 91-year-old curanderismo Gabrielito Pino was still gathering the herb after August 12 in the Mora valley for stomach, kidney, and urinary problems because that day was "consecrated to the Blessed Virgin." In older eastern church traditions, Dormition, when Mary’s body was removed to heaven, followed her death on the 12th by three days and this midpoint between mid-summer and the fall equinox was marked by ceremonies blessing the herbs in Europe. The 15th, Assumption Day, is still a Laguna and Zia feast day.
Somehow this close relative of coreopsis found its way to Argentina, perhaps with the Spanish. There té indio is used for gonorrhea, kidney and nerve problems. Zoncho Tso has been told by relatives that some of their fellow Navajo have used it for the venereal disease. His mother also told him he should say a prayer when he gathered this, or any herb, explain why he was taking the plant from its home, and always leave some behind.
I think the only people who don’t appreciate greenthread live in Los Alamos where the national lab doesn’t want any vegetation over its landfills which could disturb what lies below. The Earth and Environmental Sciences Division found Hopi tea to be one of the first plants to colonize a conventional cover.
Here it stays to the shoulder, where its taproot can reach the water shed by the pavement and it co-exists with gumweed and pigweed. This year, the visible plants don’t grow in dense colonies, but are scattered. So far, the perennial has shown no interest in my land or any inland fields, clinging instead to the moister edges of civilization.
Notes:
Arellano, Anselm. "New Mexico’s Healing Tradition: Curanderismo Survives 400 Years," Herbs for Health 46-52:March/April 1997. Pius XII formalized the chronology in 1950 when he set Assumption day as August 15. Since the Roman Catholic Church repudiates the more corporal aspects of Mary’s life, her physical death is not recognized like it is in eastern and older folk traditions.Breshears, David D., John W. Nyhan, and David W. Davenport. "Ecohydrology Monitoring and Excavation of Semiarid Landfill Covers a Decade after Installation," Vadose Zone Journal 4:798-810:2005.Davicino, Roberto, María Aída Mattar, Yolanda Angelina Casali, Silvia Graciela Correa, Elisa Margarita Pettenati, and Blas Micalizzi. "Actividad Antifungica de Extractos de Plantas Usadas en Medicina Popular en Argentina," Revista Peruana Biología 14:247-251:2007.
Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998, and on-line database.
Tso, Zoncho. "Thelesperma megapotamicum" website.

Photograph: Hopi Tea growing beside the road between storms last Sunday, 17 August 2008.