Yopo is the common name of Anadenanthera peregrina, a shrub or tree in the pea family. Kew’s Plants of the World Online gives its native range as the Caribbean to southern tropical America (POWO). Linnaeus first described it in 1753 as Mimosa peregrina, and older chemistry papers call it Piptadenia peregrina.
Its seeds were the source of a ritual snuff. The first written account of cohoba comes from Ramón Pané, who travelled with Columbus and described its ceremonial use in Hispaniola as early as 1496; it was only in 1916 that the botanist W. E. Safford identified the snuff’s source as this tree (Chamakura, 1994). These colonial accounts were written by outsiders and carry their biases.
Its name is often confused with a relative. A 2024 review separates A. peregrina, known as yopo, parica or cohoba in northern South America, from A. colubrina, known as vilca or cebil further south (Lema, 2024). Chemical analyses of yopo seeds most often report bufotenine as the main tryptamine, with DMT, and in some samples 5-MeO-DMT, also reported. Bufotenine has well-described effects on the heart and blood vessels.
In Canada, DMT is in Schedule III of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act; bufotenine, 5-MeO-DMT and the tree itself are not named. This is not legal advice.
Sources
- Plants of the World Online (Kew): Anadenanthera peregrina
- Lema, 2024, Plants: contemporary uses of vilca
- Chamakura, 1994, Forensic Science Review: bufotenine in ancient snuff powders
- Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Justice Laws)
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