Much to our surprise, Ipomoea alba, Moonflower, is also a medicinal plant. I hope it is included in books on Mayan medicinal plants, but I bet it is missing from many of them.
Ipomoea alba is also toxic: and is missing from Plantas toxicas de Mexico, by Abigail Aguilar and Carlos Zolla’s co-authored monograph on toxic plants.
Ipomoea alba is also edible (in Africa and India) so in theory could be edible in Mesoamerica as well (despite being toxic; many toxic plants are eaten readily). Ipomoea alba is native to Mesoamerica, and introduced to the rest of the world. We raise it in our Mayan ethnobotanical and ethnomedicinal garden (to study the structure of the flower as it opens in the evening).
I just did a TV documentary a few months ago where 66% of the native Maya plants eaten by the gourmet chefs were toxic). Note: it depends which part of the plant you eat. Each part of many plants has chemicals totally different than other parts. However on the TV documentary, I myself ate only flor de pacaya, since I have eaten this for years. But I passed on the other two flowers since one comes from a tree named “mata raton.”
And the other flower was from a palo de pito tree, whose seeds are so toxic they can’t be imported into USA as jewelry (lots of bright colored seeds are used to make necklaces throughout Mesoamerica).
To see the video (which fortunately does not include eating the flowers of Ipomoea alba, since I was not yet aware parts of this plant were edible), here is the link: “El sabor de Mi Tierra - Flores Comestibles de Mesoamérica” in Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/121917491
Posted Jan. 27, 2016
