Maté (Yerba Maté, Ilex paraguariensis); Cassina (Yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria)
After the coffee, tea, and cacao trees, yerba maté is the largest source of caffeine consumed in the world. The astringent beverage maté (Gon gouha), which has given its name to the plant from which it is infused, is the coffee and tea of a large group of people in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Chile, in that it is the produced under cultivation, the best maté is reputed to come from wild trees. More than 250,000 tons of yerba maté leaves are harvested every year, containing about 3,000 tons of caffeine, or nearly 3 percent of the world’s total, enough to enliven, very roughly, fifty billion cups of maté. Much of Brazilian and Paraguayan production is exported to Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.34
Ilex paraguariensis is a species of holly native to Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, growing to a height of sixty to ninety feet in the wild, with oval dark green leaves six to eight inches long, and producing small white flowers. When cultivated it is trimmed to twelve to eighteen feet. The flowers form in the leaf axils and at the base of the small branches. Although harvesting begins three to five years after planting, full productivity is attained in ten years and continues for about another ten years. As with tea, a superior product is produced from very young, unopened leaflets. Harvesting is performed by Indians who climb the trees, clear them of vines, and cut off the smaller leafy branches, leaving the larger ones to maintain the health of the tree. The branches are bundled and briefly toasted by drawing over an open fire to dry, while stopping short of charring. After further drying at a processing factory, which takes about fifteen hours, during which the temperature is kept below 200 degrees Fahrenheit to avoid loss of caffeine potency, a threshing process is used to separate the leaf from the bark and twigs. The resulting leaf is sifted for grading and blending, then packed in 50- to 150-pound bags. It is aged for six months to a year and a half to produce a palatable beverage.
As is the case with Camellia sinensis, there has been a divergence of opinion about its botanical nomenclature. Today, however, it is generally acknowledged that paraguariensis is a single species with many varieties. The leaves are sold either green, producing a beverage with a disagreeable bitter astringency, or roasted, yielding a drink with a pleasant smoky flavor. Rich in vitamin C and tannins as well as caffeine, a 6-ounce cup of maté as it is usually prepared contains about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of tea. The Guarani Indians of Paraguay used yerba maté as a stimulant and to prevent scurvy. Today it is extensively cultivated in Argentina, where maté drinking is a social event that can continue for hours, and maté is the most popular caffeine-containing drink. It is also widely used in Paraguay, where it has been known as “Paraguay tea” for at least a century.35
A comparison of maté and ordinary tea was noted by two English writers toward the end of the nineteenth century. The first wrote that, as between coffee, tea, and chocolate:
Of the three beverages…tea is the one which nearest resembles maté; but between tea and maté there is much difference in taste, and though I believe that maté deserves some degree of popularity here, it should by no means be put forward as resembling tea, but as a new drink for the English people.36
The second likened the effects of the maté’s active principle to that of theine, the name given to caffeine as occurring in tea, and stated that some authorities claim maté is a species of tea.37
The methylxanthine content of maté, which is generally accepted as the basis for its use as a beverage, has been extensively investigated. Reported caffeine concentrations range from about 1 percent to 2 percent, the young leaves having the highest levels. However, because the beverage maté is brewed from as many as sixty different species of the Ilex genus, and, as noted below, because of the way it is prepared, a determination of the average caffeine levels occurring in the drink is problematic. Theobromine and theophylline may also occur in maté, although some investigators have failed to detect them. However, even if present, their concentrations in the dried leaf are pharmacologically insignificant.
Long before the Spanish explorers arrived in the early sixteenth century, the plant was infused by the indigenous population to make a beverage in those areas of South America to which it is native. Like the other caffeinated botanicals, maté was also employed as a means of exchange. “Maté” is a Spanish word derived from an Inca word meaning “calabash.” In South America, the leaves of yerba maté are infused and drunk in a calabash through a six-inch reed or silver straw with a bulb-shaped strainer (bombilla) to screen out the sediment. The native word for the plant is “caa,” but the Spanish called it “Yerba.” Maté’s use was eagerly adopted by the colonists, who found it so desirable that the governor of Paraguay gave settlers the right to impress the natives to collect the leaves for its preparation. Jesuit priests, who arrived in Paraguay around 1550, took control of the producing areas and began cultivation of selected varieties to ensure a good supply, and, in consequence, the drink has often been called “Jesuit tea.” Paraguayan prisoners brought back to Brazil by Portuguese invaders helped spread the knowledge of the drink in Brazil. Almost all Argentinean and Brazilian maté is produced through cultivation, while much of the Paraguayan leaf has been harvested from jungle plants.
When the tealike beverage is prepared in the traditional South American manner, boiling water is poured over the dried leaves in a small silver-mounted calabash about the size of an apple; in family circles the gourd and bombilla are passed around like a pot pipe. However, today a teapot and cups are frequently used instead of a gourd and straw. About one-half to two ounces of leaves are used for each quart of water or heated milk, and sugar and lemon are often added when milk has not been used. Because several successive infusions are made from the same leaf by adding more boiling water, it is very difficult to approximate the caffeine content of the resulting beverage. The best estimates suggest a range from about 25 mg per 6-ounce serving, about as much as a very weak cup of tea, up to about 100 mg, or the same as a cup of instant coffee.
Maté leaves are sold in many health food stores, usually as ingredients in herbal tea mixtures, such as Celestial Seasonings “Morning Thunder.” As is the case with other exotic caffeine-containing plant products, packages of maté sometimes misrepresent the product as a caffeine-free herbal tea.
In North America, the cured leaves of the yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria, also called “cassina” or “Appalachian holly,”38 have been similarly infused for centuries to make cassina, a hot, stimulating drink. In 1542, Narvaez and Cabeza de Vaca, Spanish explorers of North America, described how cassina was used to make a ceremonial black drink and medicinal potation by the coastal Indians of North Carolina. In 1562, Capatain Laudonnière, who had sailed with the blessing of King Charles IX of France to find a suitable place to relocate French Protestants, was presented with basketfuls of cassina and observed the plant was used for currency among the natives. As recently as 1924, assemblies of Creek Indian men are described as taking concentrated infusions of cassina continually for two or three days running, in part to induce vomiting and receive its beneficial purgative effects.
Curing processes were developed early in this century by the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture for producing three types: green, black, and “cassina maté.” The last most closely resembles yerba maté.39 Even with the full backing of the federal government, none of these efforts resulted in a commercially viable drink.
Cola (Cola acuminata; Cola nitida)
Cola nuts are the caffeine-rich nuts of Cola acuminata and Cola nitida, evergreen forest trees native to tropical West Africa. The trees are members of the same botanical family as cacao and are widely cultivated in South America and have also been transported to India and China. Cola trees, which resemble chestnut trees, reach sixty feet in height. The brown, oblong nuts, about two inches long, are picked by hand and dried in the sun for use as ingredients in medicines and soft drinks.
C
ola nuts, which have an acerbic, aromatic flavor, are commonly chewed by African laborers and other natives to reduce hunger and fatigue. In addition to a large dose of caffeine, cola nuts contain the glucoside kolanin, a fruit sugar that may contribute to their powerful revivifying effects.40 In Nigeria, for example, office workers often rely on chewing cola nuts for the same purpose as American white-collar employees drink coffee, and, as a gesture of hospitality, visitors to private homes are frequently offered cola nuts to chew. A cola nut brew, called “Sudan coffee” by the Arabs and “African tea” by others, was long used by the nomadic tribes of Somalia, the Sudan, and other African countries. In Brazil and the West Indies, the nuts are used to help sober up drunks and as a hangover remedy, much as some people use coffee in America and Europe,41 and with just as little success.
A sign of the importance of cola to the Africans is the story of its divine origin:
One day when the Creator was on earth observing the sons of men and busy among them, he put aside a piece of the cola nut which he was chewing and forgot to take it with him when he went away again. A man saw this and seized the dainty morsel. His wife tried to prevent him from tasting the food of God. The man, however, placed it in his mouth and found that it tasted good. While he was still chewing, the Creator returned, sought the forgotten piece of cola, and saw how the man tried to swallow it. He quickly grasped at his throat and forced him to return the fruit. Since that time there can be seen in the throat of man the “Adam’s apple,” trace of the pressure of the fingers of God.42
The earliest mentions of the fruit may have occurred in the writings of El Ghafeky, a twelfth-century Spanish physician, and of the thirteenth-century Arab botanist Ebn El-Baithar. While their descriptions of a certain fruit sound as if cola is being referred to, their characterization of the seeds seems not to fit this identification. In any case, the word “cola” first occurs in the last half of the sixteenth century, in the works of Clusius and other writers who learned of the existence of the plant from returning European travelers and explorers.
Louis Lewin (1850–1929), a German pharmacologist, physician, and researcher, reports in his book Phantastica that, as late as 1920, cola nuts still played an important part
in the social life and commercial relations of these peoples [the inhabitants of the Sudan between the Atlantic and the source of the Nile]. Much trouble is taken in order to obtain the drug. The Haussa, for instance, organize long caravan-journeys to the country of the Ashanti, and their arrival is an important event for the latter. Those who have no money to buy the drug beg. Rich people ingratiate themselves by distributing nuts or pieces of nuts. The inhabitant Kano in northern Nigeria does not hesitate to sell his horse or his best slave, his two most important possessions, in order to enjoy his favorite pastime. Indeed, it is not rare for a poor man to seize an already half-masticated piece of another person’s nut and to continue chewing it.43
Lewin adds that, at this time, “These nuts, like every eagerly desired substance which modifies cerebral activity, are fairly expensive. Every thing, even slaves, can be bought with nuts.”
In some African countries these caffeine-containing nuts are so valuable and widely coveted for their stimulating power that they continue to be used as local currency.
Like other caffeinated botanicals in Arabia, China, and South America, cola nuts are important fixtures of the ceremonies of everyday African life. In Nigeria, for example, a marriage proposal is accompanied by the white variety of cola nuts and a refusal is accompanied by red cola nuts. Cola is also a necessary part of every dowry. In addition, “Oaths are sworn on the kola nut, friendships or hostilities are symbolized by kola and some nuts are even buried with the dead.”44
The sorcerers of the Konkomba, a tribe living in the Oti Plain, part of the former French and British territories of northern Togoland, are well known to specialize in administering fatal medicines to procure the death of their victims. Cola nuts have a cleft down the middle that these magicians have used as a convenient repository for their poisons. Therefore, as a precaution, tribe members will not eat cola nuts given to them by strangers. The usual procedure is to “accept the nut, thank the giver, and, later, throw it away.”45
Cola nuts have a strong taste and, compared with other natural sources, contain a strong concentration of caffeine. However, contrary to a common belief, the flavor of cola soft drinks does not come from these nuts and neither does their caffeine. While it is true that cola soft drinks contain significant doses of caffeine, their insignificant cola nut content contributes only about 5 percent of the total. The rest of the caffeine in colas and all of the caffeine found in other sodas is a by-product of coffee and tea decaffeination that has been added to the citrus, vanilla, cinnamon, and other flavoring components of these drinks.
A curiosity is gotu cola, also known as Indian pennywort, a traditional Chinese medicinal herb believed by some to prolong life. This swamp plant is native to China, Sri Lanka, and South Africa and has been used as a folk remedy for leprosy, cancer, skin disorders, arthritis, hemorrhoids, and tuberculosis. It has also been used as an energy tonic, aphrodisiac, and treatment for mental disorders. In the United States it is an ingredient in many herbal “energy formulas.” A common misconception is that gotu cola contains caffeine. Although it is true that gotu cola may well contain anti-inflammatory glycosides, agents that can heal skin ulcers, it contains no caffeine whatsoever.
Guarana (Paullinia cupana) and Yoco (Paullinia yoco)
Guarana (Paullinia cupana) is a woody climbing plant of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae), native to the Amazon basin. It has large leaves, clusters of short-stalked flowers, and yields a fruit about the size of a coffee berry, usually containing a single seed. The genus took its name from its discoverer, C.F.Paulini, a German botanist who died in 1712.46 Guarana seeds, named for the Guaranis Indians,47 are roasted and brewed to make a stimulating drink popular in South America. It has a bitter, astringent taste, and a faint coffeelike odor. The caffeine content of these seeds is about three times greater than that of an equivalent weight in coffee beans. Because guarana has such a high concentration of the drug, it was used in the nineteenth century as a source of the compound for medicinal purposes.48 The bark of the yoco tree (Paullinia yoco), a sister species to guarana, is also used like guarana seeds to prepare a caffeinated drink.
To make the tea, guarana seeds are shelled and washed and pounded into a fine powder, which is kneaded with water into dough and shaped into cylinders. When these rods are dried in the sun or over a low fire, they become very hard and assume a russet color. About a half a teaspoonful is grated from these sticks, which are sometimes called “guarana bread” or “Brazilian cocoa,” and dissolved, along with sugar, in hot water. As typically prepared, the resulting brew, which is known as “Brazilian tea,” carries a bigger caffeine charge than coffee. Guarana’s astringency, like tea’s, is caused by tannin. In addition to containing caffeine, guarana and yoco each yield a chemical that produces soapy lather, saponin, which is used in tropical countries as a soap substitute. Saponin has the unusual property of stupefying fish when thrown into small streams.49
The habit of Brazilian miners, who believe that the beverage is not only refreshing but preventative of many diseases, is to carry a guarana stick, which is almost as hard as stone, together with the palate bone or scale of a big fish with which to grate it. The Orinoco Indians, who give their name to the valley to which cacao is indigenous, ferment the crushed seeds until nearly putrid and infuse the product with hot water.
Guarana is also commonly sweetened and bottled as a carbonated soft drink, similar in effect, if not in flavor, to our familiar cola sodas. In the United States, guarana is sometimes an ingredient in herbal teas, and capsules of guarana powder are sold in health food stores, under such brand names as ZING. These products are often misleadingly marketed as new organic stimulants from the Amazon rainforest, taking advantage of the fact that most people are unaware that caffeine i
s found in plants other than coffee or tea. Here is an excerpt from a French advertisement for guarana pills that supplies a fanciful history, while also trying to convince its readers that guarana is popular in the United States today:
The Amazon Indians used it for centuries to give them strength. In the Tupi language, “guarana” means “making war.” Many who used it could enjoy up to six women at a time and achieved an advanced age. It was only in the seventeenth century that guarana was discovered by Father Felip Betendorf and was made known to western civilizations. The commercialization of guarana began in 1958, and soon after it became the tonic plant and fortifying agent most used and most popular in Brazil. It is equally widely used in the United States.
The World of Caffeine Page 38