Yopo (Anadenanthera peregrina): the cohoba tree, its history and its chemistry

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Yopo is a tree before it is anything else. It is a legume related to acacias and mimosas, and its seeds have a long, documented place in the ritual life of Indigenous peoples of northern South America and, before the colonial era, the Caribbean. This guide covers the plant, its names, the historical and ethnographic record, and what chemists have reported finding in it.

What is yopo?

Yopo is the common name of *Anadenanthera peregrina* (L.) Speg., a shrub or tree in the pea family, Fabaceae. Plants of the World Online, run by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, accepts the name and says the species grows mainly in the seasonally dry tropical biome. Its native range runs from the Caribbean to southern tropical America: Bolivia, northern, northeastern and southeastern Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Guyana, Haiti, the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and the Windward Islands (POWO). Evidence: established.

The tree has carried many scientific names. Linnaeus first described it in 1753 as *Mimosa peregrina*; it was later placed in *Acacia*, *Niopa* and *Piptadenia*, and older chemistry papers call it *Piptadenia peregrina*. One synonym, *Inga niopo*, preserves the name niopo that Humboldt and Bonpland recorded (POWO). Much of the research below was published under the old names. Evidence: established.

A 2024 review describes the genus’s pods as long and flat, holding thin, flat, round and shiny brown or black seeds (Lema, 2024). The same review notes that *A. peregrina* was introduced to the Greater Antilles in pre-Hispanic times, while Kew lists the Caribbean islands as part of its native range (POWO). A 1994 review also describes the species as probably naturalized in the West Indies (Chamakura, 1994). Whether people carried the tree to the islands is still open. Evidence: unresolved.

Yopo, cohoba, cebil and vilca: which plant is which?

The genus *Anadenanthera* has two species, and their names are often mixed up online. *A. peregrina* is known as yopo, parica or cohoba, and is found in Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Brazil and Paraguay. Its relative *A. colubrina* is known as vilca or willka in Peru, Bolivia and Chile, and as cebil in Argentina, and grows mainly in seasonally dry forests between 0 and 30 degrees south (Lema, 2024). A 2022 research synthesis draws the same line: snuffs called cohoba and yopo come from *A. peregrina* in northern South America, and those called vilca, huilca and cibil from *A. colubrina* further south (Ermakova et al., 2022). Evidence: established.

Most of the archaeology people quote as “ancient DMT” concerns *A. colubrina*, vilca, in the Andes. We cover those finds, from Chavín de Huántar to a Bolivian ritual bundle, in ancient DMT and snuff archaeology, and do not repeat them here.

What do early colonial sources say about cohoba?

The first written account of cohoba comes from Ramón Pané, who travelled with Columbus on his second voyage and described its ceremonial use in Hispaniola as early as 1496. In his account the snuff was used by priests to communicate with spirits. Many early writers then confused cohoba with tobacco snuff, and it was only in 1916 that the botanist W. E. Safford identified its source as *Piptadenia peregrina*, now *Anadenanthera peregrina* (Chamakura, 1994). Evidence: established for the record; the colonial accounts are written by outsiders and carry their biases.

Archaeology in the Caribbean has since added physical evidence. In 2014, researchers reported starch grains consistent with those in modern cojoba (*A. peregrina*) seeds on a coral milling base from a small precolonial habitation site in eastern Puerto Rico, in a context dated to about AD 1150–1250. It was the first such find in the West Indies. The authors propose that the seeds were used there mainly to help a healer divine the cause of illness (Pagán-Jiménez and Carlson, 2014). Evidence: the starch identification is established; the healing interpretation is the authors’, and preliminary.

Use of the snuff in the islands did not survive the colonial period. The ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes wrote in 1976 that it disappeared with the destruction of the Indigenous populations of the West Indies (Chamakura, 1994). That loss is part of the history, and it is a reason to treat surviving traditions on the mainland with care.

How is yopo recorded among Orinoco peoples?

On the mainland, European descriptions of niopo or yopo go back to Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, who recorded it among peoples of the Orinoco region of Colombia and Venezuela in 1801, and to the British botanist Richard Spruce, who described it in 1851 (Chamakura, 1994). A 2007 review in a Spanish neurology journal states that *Anadenanthera* snuff is still used by several Indigenous groups of the Orinoco basin, where it is known as yopo, and in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon (Carod-Artal and Vázquez Cabrera, 2007). Evidence: established.

Modern ethnography shows the practice as living culture, not a relic. A 2011 study of the Piaroa and Cuiva of the Orinoco found that yopo is tied to the performance of narratives central to each group’s cosmology and identity. For the Cuiva, it is also a way of resisting persecution. Among the Piaroa, attitudes are shaped by shamanic ethics and by missionary activity: some lay people see yopo as a relic of the past, while shamans regard it as necessary to their work (Rodd and Sumabila, 2011). Evidence: established for these two communities; it does not describe every group that uses yopo.

What chemicals have analyses found in yopo?

The short version: bufotenine (5-hydroxy-DMT) is the compound most consistently reported in the seeds, DMT turns up as a minor or variable compound, and 5-MeO-DMT appears in some samples and in the bark. A 2024 review sums up the genus this way: the effects are attributed mainly to DMT, bufotenine and 5-MeO-DMT, particularly in the seeds (Lema, 2024). A 2020 toxicology review adds that DMT is a minor alkaloid in the bark, pods and beans of both *Anadenanthera* species (Malaca et al., 2020). Evidence: established that all three have been reported; the proportions vary widely.

The individual studies tell a more interesting story. Bufotenine was first isolated from the plant’s seeds in 1954, in material from Puerto Rico (Stromberg, 1954). A 1963 paper reported N-methyltryptamine, 5-methoxy-N-methyltryptamine and 5-MeO-DMT from the bark, not the seeds (Legler and Tschesche, 1963). The table below lists what each analysis reported, as summarised in a 1994 forensic review that read the originals (Chamakura, 1994).

Two lessons come out of that record. First, origin matters: the same species gave a bufotenine-dominant result from Puerto Rico and a 5-MeO-DMT-dominant result from western Brazil in the same 1967 study. Second, storage matters: the 1977 team saw the minor alkaloids disappear from stored seeds and stressed that storage time, plant part, soil, season and climate all need recording when seeds are analysed (Chamakura, 1994). Evidence: established for the reported results; they are a handful of samples, not a survey of the species.

So is yopo a “DMT plant”? Chemically, it is better described as a bufotenine plant in which DMT and sometimes 5-MeO-DMT also occur. For how these molecules differ, see what is bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT vs DMT; for DMT across the natural world, see where DMT comes from in nature.

What does research report about yopo’s effects and risks?

The historical accounts are dramatic. Pané wrote that the snuff was so strong that people lost consciousness, and a priest, José Gumilla, writing in 1741, described yupa as driving people out of their minds. Humboldt attributed its stimulating effect to the lime mixed with it, which later writers called an error (Chamakura, 1994). These are outsiders’ descriptions, and they say little about what participants experienced or valued. Evidence: historical record, not clinical data.

The laboratory record centres on bufotenine, and much of it is about the body rather than the mind. The 1994 review quotes a 1950s remark by Dr. Isbell, a researcher of tryptamines, describing bufotenine as having powerful and dangerous effects on the heart and circulation: high blood pressure, a heart-rhythm disturbance in which the upper chambers stop beating, and a striking blue or purple colour of the upper body. It also summarises a 1956 injection study by Fabing and Hawkins in which volunteers developed chest tightness and a purple facial colour (Chamakura, 1994). Doses are not reproduced here. Evidence: established that these effects were reported in early studies; the studies were small and old.

Newer work points the same way. In a 2023 laboratory study, bufotenin increased the force and rate of heart-muscle contraction in mouse hearts engineered to carry the human serotonin 5-HT4 receptor, and increased the contraction force of isolated human atrial tissue (Neumann et al., 2023). That is tissue in a dish, not people, but it gives a mechanism for the cardiovascular effects described decades ago. Evidence: preliminary.

Whether bufotenine itself is psychedelic is still argued. The 1994 review collects both sides: a 1950s study by Turner and Merlis that could not produce intoxication in volunteers with snuff powders at amounts they tolerated, a reference text ranking bufotenine as having weak if any hallucinogenic potential, and the view that it does not easily cross from the blood into the brain (Chamakura, 1994). Our bufotenin explainer goes through that debate. Evidence: unresolved.

Why cultural respect matters here

Yopo is not a curiosity from the past. It remains part of the religious and social life of Indigenous peoples in the Orinoco region, under pressure from persecution and missionary activity (Rodd and Sumabila, 2011). A botanist writing about Amazonian poisons and narcotics argued that this kind of knowledge should be documented before it is lost, and that any commercial gain from it should directly benefit the peoples who hold it, under the rules of the Convention on Biological Diversity (Prance, 1999).

In practice, that means learning about yopo from the people who use it and the researchers who work with them, not from marketing that strips the plant of its context. The tree matters in other ways too: Kew records environmental and social uses as well as its use as a poison and a medicine (POWO).

Is yopo legal in Canada?

We read the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act on 24 October 2026, in the consolidation current to 30 September 2026 and last amended on 18 July 2026. Schedule III, item 7, lists “N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) (3-[(2-dimethylamino) ethyl]indole) and any salt thereof”. A search of the full text found no mention of bufotenine, of 5-MeO-DMT, of *Anadenanthera* or of *Piptadenia* (Justice Laws, CDSA). In other words, one of the compounds reported in the seeds is a Schedule III substance, while the plant itself and the other two compounds are not named in the Act. Evidence: established for what the text says.

Not being named in the Act does not make a substance legal to sell, import or consume, and other federal laws can apply. Laws also change. For the full picture on DMT, see is DMT legal in Canada. This is not legal advice.

What we still don’t know

• Whether yopo is native to the Caribbean islands or was carried there by people before European contact (unresolved).
• How much the chemistry of the seeds varies across the species’ range: the published analyses cover only a few samples (unresolved).
• How much of the reported effects come from bufotenine, from DMT or 5-MeO-DMT, or from other plants and additives used in traditional snuffs (unresolved).
• What cohoba meant to the Taíno in their own terms: the written record comes from colonial outsiders (unresolved).
• We did not read the 1954, 1955, 1967 and 1977 chemistry papers in full; their findings here come from a 1994 review that did.

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