Banisteriopsis caapi is a woody climbing vine of the Amazon in the Malpighiaceae family, the plant the word “ayahuasca” originally named. It contains β-carboline alkaloids, mainly harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine, not DMT. Harmine and harmaline block the enzyme MAO-A, which is why the vine matters to ayahuasca chemistry and why it carries real drug-interaction risks (McKenna, Towers and Abbott, 198490003-5)).
The British botanist Richard Spruce collected it near the Uaupés River in the 1850s, and August Grisebach first classified it as Banisteria caapi. The species name is itself Indigenous: a 2023 history lists caapi as the Baniwa name for the drink (Lima and Marinho, 2023). In 1923 a Colombian physician named an alkaloid from the vine “telepathine”; it, “yageine” and “banisterine” all turned out to be harmine (Lima and Marinho, 2023).
A 2018 paper that sequenced the vine’s chloroplast genome is titled “Sequencing the Vine of the Soul” (Ramachandran et al., 2018). In Brazil the vine is also called mariri or jagube. Wild populations are under pressure where they have been studied: a 2023 model of heavily harvested vines in the Peruvian Amazon projected a 1.3% yearly decline (Coe and Gaoue, 2023).
Sources
- Lima and Marinho, 2023, História, Ciências, Saúde: early ayahuasca research 1850–1950
- Ramachandran et al., 2018, Genome Announcements: chloroplast genome of B. caapi
- McKenna, Towers and Abbott, 1984, Journal of Ethnopharmacology: MAO inhibitors in ayahuasca plants
- Coe and Gaoue, 2023, Journal of Applied Ecology: harvested ayahuasca lianas in Peru
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