SCARLET-BUSH ABLAZE
& READY FOR USE

All through tropical America, from Mexico to Paraguay, if you're traveling down a road where there's enough rainfall to support forest at least 20 feet high, the vegetation is weedy and the soil is halfway rich, if you see a much-branched shrub with rich-green, leafy, non-woody branches ending in bright clusters of slender, red flowers, a good first bet is that the plant is HAMELIA PATENS, in English sometimes called Scarlet-Bush. That's one of our roadside beauties below:

One reason Hamelia patens is so conspicuous is because it has a long flowering season. As an evergreen shrub with herbaceous shoots up to 12 feet high, it just catches your attention again and again.

Hamelia patens is a member of the Coffee Family, the Rubiaceae, characterized by its stems bearing conspicuous, sharp-pointed stipules between opposite leaf bases, and the flowers being "inferior" -- corolla and stamens arising above the ovary, not at its base as in most flowers. Doña Martha, who calls the plant Kanán in Maya, has a high opinion of the species' medicinal value.

"Combine its leaves with those of Pomegranate and Guava, brew a tea from them, and you can cure skin soars by washing the skin with the tea. The tea is also good to wash around in your mouth when your mouth is enflamed and painful. And if you cut yourself, you heal better if you toast its leaves in the comal, grind them to a fine powder, and sprinkle the powder in the wound."

I have seen that people who really know about medicinal herbs typically combine two or more herbs together for a cure, seldom depending on a single plant. In this case it's interesting that while Scarlet-Bush and Guavas are native Tropical American plants, Pomegranates originated in Asia, so the blending of these three plant leaves by the Maya clearly came about after the Spanish Conquest.

It's also interesting that Maximino Martínez's Las Plantas Medicinales de México mentions different uses for the plant. There the plant is recommended for swollen, aching legs, and for removing "bad humors" from the body.