Ololiuhqui, the seed of the Mexican morning glory Ipomoea corymbosa, appears in sixteenth-century Nahua testimony as a seed of fearful visions and in seventeenth-century extirpation manuals as a divinatory medicine. Zapotec, Chinantec, Mazatec, Mixtec and Nahua communities have continued to consult it, as semilla de la Virgen, to learn why an illness began or where something is lost. Its ergot alkaloids, chiefly lysergic acid α-hydroxyethylamide and ergine, are made by a fungal symbiont, Periglandula turbinae, carried in the seed. Which compound accounts for the ceremonial effects is unresolved.
| Botanical name | Ipomoea corymbosa |
|---|---|
| Taxa | Convolvulaceae · Solanales · Magnoliopsida |
| Traditional names | ololiuhqui · coaxihuitl · semilla de la Virgen · Christmas vine · formerly Turbina corymbosa |
| Regions | Native from Mexico and the Caribbean through Central America into tropical South America, including Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. |
| Ethnographic entheogenic use | Ololiuhqui, the seed of a Mexican morning glory, appears in sixteenth-century Nahua testimony as a seed of fearful visions and in seventeenth-century extirpation manuals as a divinatory medicine. Zapotec, Chinantec, Mazatec, Mixtec and Nahua communities have continued to consult it, as semilla de la Virgen (Sahagún, 1950–1982; Ruiz de Alarcón, 1629/1984; Wasson, 1963; Fagetti, 2025). |
| Accepted name | Ipomoea corymbosa (L.) Roth. Linnaeus published the basionym Convolvulus corymbosus in 1759; Roth’s combination appeared in 1819. Current phylogenetic and global taxonomic treatments place the species within Ipomoea (Muñoz-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Wood et al., 2020; POWO, 2026). |
|---|---|
| Principal synonyms | Turbina corymbosa (L.) Raf.; Rivea corymbosa (L.) Hallier f.; Legendrea corymbosa (L.) Ooststr. These names are taxonomic synonyms for one species. “Turbina” persists because the one-seeded, indehiscent fruit once supported a segregate genus. |
| Family | Convolvulaceae, the morning-glory family. |
| Order | Solanales. |
| Geographic range | Native from Mexico and the Caribbean through Central America into tropical South America, including Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. It is naturalised in Florida and other warm regions of the Americas, Macaronesia, Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Australia. The species grows principally as a liana in wet tropical forest margins, secondary vegetation, hedges and disturbed ground (Wood et al., 2020; POWO, 2026). |
| Local names | Ololiuhqui/ololiuqui primarily names the rounded seeds or drug in Nahuatl-language sources; the vine is described as coaxihuitl or coatl xoxouhqui. Spanish and regional names include semilla de la Virgen, manto de la Virgen, hiedra, bejuco, aguinaldo blanco and Christmas vine. Piule is a wider regional category covering several plants. Tlitliltzin, the “black little one”, generally denotes black angular morning-glory seeds associated with I. tricolor, though historical naming shifts (Schultes, 1941; Wasson, 1963; Fagetti, 2025). |
| Growth form | Long-lived, vigorous, woody twining vine, often several metres long, with slender glabrous or sparsely hairy stems. It climbs shrubs and trees and may form broad flowering masses in season. |
| Conservation | No global IUCN assessment. Its broad native range, ornamental cultivation and naturalisation suggest that the species as a whole is secure. Ritual seed lineages, local access, named knowledge and habitats are a separate question; in some introduced regions, conversely, the vine is managed as an environmental weed (CABI, 2026; POWO, 2026). |
A pre-Conquest history is strongly inferred from Nahuatl names and early testimony, but no archaeobotanical seed assemblage fixes an earlier date.
Leaves are alternate, entire, broadly ovate to cordate, generally with an acute or acuminate tip and a deeply heart-shaped base. The inflorescences are conspicuous many-flowered cymes that can appear corymb-like, giving the species its epithet. The salverform to narrowly funnel-shaped corollas are white, sometimes greenish at the throat, with a long tube adapted to animal pollination. Sepals persist and enlarge around the developing fruit. The mature fruit is globose to ovoid, dry, woody and indehiscent, normally enclosing one smooth brown seed. That fruit differs from the dehiscent capsules common in many morning glories and drove the earlier classification in Turbina (Wood et al., 2020).
The vine produces abundant nectar and can be a significant honey plant. In the Yucatán, the Maya name xtabentún is associated with the flower and with a honey-based anise liqueur; in Cuba its winter flowering has contributed to the English name Christmas vine. Pollinator, ornamental and ritual economies therefore overlap without being identical. Seed-bearing plants also transmit the fungal partner that produces their characteristic ergoline chemistry.
Large-scale molecular and morphological studies dissolve Turbina into Ipomoea. Ipomoea corymbosa is consequently the accepted name, even where ethnographic and chemical studies retain Rivea corymbosa or Turbina corymbosa (Muñoz-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Wood et al., 2020).
Rounded tan-brown ololiuhqui and black angular tlitliltzin were differentiated in twentieth-century fieldwork. The latter is usually identified with Ipomoea tricolor; translations that call both simply “morning glory” obscure botanical and ceremonial distinctions (MacDougall, 1960; Wasson, 1963).
Colonial plant names were relational categories embedded in Nahua medicine, tribute, locality and ritual. No modern binomial should be projected onto every occurrence of ololiuhqui, piule or “seed of the Virgin” without a specimen, image or precise description.
Morning-glory identifications proposed for the Tepantitla murals at Teotihuacan and for flowers on the Xochipilli statue are suggestive analogies. Secure species determination awaits archaeobotanical evidence (Furst, 1974).
The seeds contain a variable mixture of clavine and lysergic-acid-derived ergot alkaloids. The central compounds are lysergic acid α-hydroxyethylamide (LAH/LSH), ergine (lysergic acid amide; LSA), isoergine, ergometrine/ergonovine, lysergol, chanoclavine-I and elymoclavine. Freshness, seed maturity, fungal chemotype, storage and extraction alter the measured profile. LAH is chemically labile and can hydrolyse to ergine, so an old analysis rich in “LSA” may describe aged material more than fresh ritual seed (Hofmann and Tscherter, 1960; Hofmann, 1963; Beaulieu et al., 2021).
The decisive modern revision is that the alkaloids come from a fungus. Periglandula turbinae, a clavicipitaceous fungus, lives epibiotically on young adaxial leaf surfaces of I. corymbosa in close association with secretory glands and is transmitted systemically through the seed. The relationship is macroscopically asymptomatic. Fungal genes encode ergot-alkaloid biosynthesis; infected seeds carry both the symbiont and its chemistry into the next plant generation (Steiner et al., 2011; Steiner and Leistner, 2012).
A survey of 210 morning-glory species found ergot alkaloids concentrated in four host clades and correlated their presence with larger seeds. Within species, alkaloid-positive and -negative accessions can coexist. This phylogenetic and chemotypic mosaic explains why a botanical name alone is a poor guide to chemical profile. Defensive benefit against seed predators, herbivores or nematodes is consistent with comparative data; experimental demonstration for each I. corymbosa population is still to come (Beaulieu et al., 2015; 2021).
Ergine binds serotonin receptors including 5-HT₂A and also adrenergic and dopamine receptors, though generally with lower affinity and efficacy than LSD. Ergometrine and other co-occurring lysergamides add distinct vascular, visceral and central actions. The seed’s pharmacology is its own, distinct from “natural LSD” (Paulke et al., 2013; Steiner and Leistner, 2018).
LAH readily decomposes or hydrolyses, while epimerisation produces iso forms. Handling history can therefore transform the object under analysis. Modern LC–MS profiles and voucher-backed fungal tests are more interpretable than nominal “LSA content” detached from storage conditions (Beaulieu et al., 2021).
Controlled human work isolated ergine and isoergine; the fresh seed ensemble has yet to be reconstructed. Which compound, ratio or metabolite best accounts for ceremonial visionary effects remains unresolved; LAH is a leading candidate but lacks adequate human pharmacology (Isbell and Gorodetzky, 1965; Steiner and Leistner, 2018).
Recent microscopy and transcript work in other Ipomoea hosts maps fungal tissue distribution and pathway expression. The 2025 isolation of Periglandula clandestina from I. tricolor provides a comparative model; the symbiont of I. corymbosa is P. turbinae (Olaranont et al., 2022; Hazel et al., 2025).
| Early colonial record | Sixteenth century Sahagún’s Nahua informants described ololiuhqui as a seed that intoxicated, disclosed fearful visions and entered medicinal practice. Francisco Hernández described the twining white-flowered plant and rounded coriander-like seed during his New Spain research of the 1570s; the illustration appeared in the 1651 Roman edition. These texts are the earliest securely identifiable records presently available (Sahagún, 1950–1982; Hernández, 1651; Schultes, 1941). |
|---|---|
| Extirpation archives | Seventeenth century Ruiz de Alarcón’s 1629 Tratado and de la Serna’s 1656 manual recorded consultations, offerings, prayers and divinatory questions while instructing clergy to suppress them. Their density shows persistence under colonial rule; their categories—“superstition”, “devil” and “idolatry”—belong to the prosecution apparatus (Ruiz de Alarcón, 1629/1984; de la Serna, 1656/1953). |
| Pre-Conquest antiquity | Strongly inferred Nahuatl nomenclature, the breadth of early testimony and the practice’s entanglement with Indigenous medicine make a pre-Conquest history highly probable. There is, however, no securely published archaeobotanical I. corymbosa seed assemblage that fixes an earlier date. “Aztec drug” is thus historically meaningful but archaeologically less precise than is often assumed. |
| Iconographic proposals | Contested Peter Furst proposed that a flowering vine in the Tepantitla mural complex at Teotihuacan represented ololiuhqui and linked it with a rain/fertility complex. Similar identifications have been made for the Xochipilli statue. Formal resemblance and later analogy are insufficient for species-level certainty; these are hypotheses about deep history (Furst, 1974). |
| Modern continuity | Twentieth–twenty-first centuries Field reports among Zapotec, Chinantec and Mazatec communities, and recent research among Mixtec, Nahua and Mazatec specialists in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Puebla, document continuing or remembered use of semilla de la Virgen, ololiuhqui and related morning-glory medicines (Schultes, 1941; Wasson, 1963; Fields, 1969; Fagetti, 2025). |
In 1963 Wasson found the seeds in use in almost every village of Oaxaca, "an ever present help in time of trouble"; only among the Triqui of Copala did he find no familiarity with them (Wasson, 1963, pp. 175–176).
In Zapotec, ololiuhqui is badoh; the long black seed of a second morning glory, Ipomoea violacea, used in the same way, is badoh negro or badungas. In some villages the black seed is called macho, male, and taken by men, while the round seed, hembra, female, is for women (Wasson, 1963, pp. 176–178).
Pedro Ponce's colonial Breve relación names ololiuhqui, peyote and tlitliltzin together as distinct products; Wasson reads tlitliltzin, from the Nahuatl for "black" with a reverential suffix, as the classical name for the black seeds (Wasson, 1963, p. 177).
Historical and ethnographic accounts describe seeds ground and suspended in water before oral consumption, commonly in darkness or at night. Silence, fasting, sexual abstinence, clean space, candles, copal, flowers and prayer appear in different regional records; no single sequence is universal. What recurs is a tightly framed question. The medicine is approached to disclose why an illness began, whether sorcery or interpersonal conflict is involved, where a lost object lies, who committed a theft, whether a traveller will return, or what treatment should follow. Darkness reduces ordinary distraction and makes dreamlike imagery, voices and bodily signs available for interpretation (Schultes, 1941; Wasson, 1963; Fields, 1969).
Colonial descriptions emphasise ingestion by a ritual specialist, yet later field reports also include patients who receive the seed under supervision while a knowledgeable attendant listens to their speech and helps interpret it. Divination is thus distributed among plant/fungus, sufferer, healer, kin and ritual setting. The answer may arrive as scene, person, animal, voice, remembered event or felt certainty, often quietly. Diagnosis and cure are socially joined: revelation can identify an offended being, neglected obligation or damaged relationship that subsequent prayer, offering, herbal treatment or restitution must address.
An early account of ololiuhqui inside a temple is the Dominican Diego Durán's description of a priestly ointment. The priests, he writes, painted themselves every day from head to foot with soot; but when they went to sacrifice, and to the dense forests, mountain summits and dark caves where they kept their idols, they anointed themselves with a different black paste, "que quiere decir comida de Dios" — "which means food of god": teotlaqualli. Boys of the temple schools collected venomous creatures for it — spiders, scorpions, centipedes, salamanders, vipers. The priests burned these in the god's brazier, ground the ashes in mortars with much picietl, a herb the Indians used "to deaden the flesh and not feel toil", with live scorpions, spiders and centipedes, and then added a ground seed "que llamauan ololiuhqui", which the Indians "la beben para solo ber bisiones" — drink only to see visions — together with hairy black worms whose hair alone is venomous. All was kneaded with soot and set before the god in pots and gourds as divine food (Durán, 1880, pp. 110–111). Anointed with it, the priests lost all fear: they killed in sacrifice with great daring and went alone at night to the mountains and caves, certain that lions, "tigers" and other wild beasts would flee from them (Durán, 1880, p. 111).
The same paste was a medicine. Called "medicina divina", it was smeared on sick people and children where they felt pain, and people came from every quarter to the temple's dignitaries to receive it. Durán, who calls it a diabolical ointment and likens it to the unguent of European witches, explained the relief it brought by the numbing power of picietl and ololiuhqui applied as a plaster (Durán, 1880, pp. 111–112). His account is a missionary's, written against the rite, and it is the only source read here for the ointment. It places ololiuhqui inside a priestly institution — compounded, offered to a god, worn on the body and applied as cure — as well as in the cup of a diviner.
The Spanish ecclesiastical campaign against ololiuhqui was unusually explicit. Confessional manuals asked about possession and consultation; extirpators destroyed seeds and punished practitioners. At the same time, colonial society continued to use Indigenous healers, and the documentary archive expanded because priests needed detailed descriptions of what they opposed. The later Catholic names left room for Indigenous cosmologies. “Seed of the Virgin” can position visionary agency within Marian protection while retaining local ideas of respect, reciprocity, offence and disclosure. The resulting tradition is syncretic in the historical sense of layered institutions and translations (Aguirre Beltrán, 1963; Fagetti, 2025).
In Nahua and Oaxacan practice, ololiuhqui is better described as a nonhuman knower than as a passive chemical key. Colonial sources repeatedly attribute speech, sight and punitive power to the seed: consultation requires correct address, and disrespect may itself produce affliction. Knowledge is a relation, established through prayer, abstinence, ingestion, darkness and interpretive discipline. This helps explain why the same pharmacological material can be used for diagnosis, moral adjudication and locating persons or objects (Ruiz de Alarcón, 1629/1984; Fagetti, 2025).
Three figurations recur without forming one universal myth. The vine’s twining morphology supports the name “snake-plant”; the rounded seed gives ololiuhqui its material index; and the Virgin lends a Christian sacred person through whom the medicine may be named and approached. Contemporary accounts sometimes gender the medicine feminine and associate it with Mary, young female saints or a maternal healer. These identities are local and historically layered. Together they make no single all-Mesoamerican “morning-glory goddess”, and they have changed since Aztec theology (Fagetti, 2025).
In Durán's account the priests' ointment of ololiuhqui, picietl and burnt creatures was put into small pots and gourds and set before the god as divine food (Durán, 1880, p. 111).
Wasson records that the seeds are ground on the metate, the household grinding stone of Mesoamerica, which thus belongs to the material culture of the rite (Wasson, 1963, p. 178).
Francisco Hernández's Thesaurus of 1651 printed a woodcut of ololiuhqui among the plants of New Spain (Hernández, 1651).
“Ololiuhqui, which some call coaxihuitl, or snake-plant, is a twining herb.”Francisco Hernández, sixteenth-century description published in 1651; translation reproduced in Schultes (1941)
Durán's "food of god" has also been sought in the painted books. On the first page of the central section of the Codex Borgia, a frame encloses a black circle; above it stands a turquoise vessel crowned with banners, a black skeletal figure, and serpent beings around. Anders, Jansen and Reyes read the vessel's contents as "poción mágica, la unción alucinante, la comida de los dioses" — a magic potion, the hallucinatory unction, the food of the gods — which, through the skeletal figure's self-sacrifice, gathers force and sends all the priests present into trance. Mikulska and Hermann Lejarazu identify that reading with Durán's teotlacualli, set it beside Boone's view of the scene as a burst of primordial creative energy, and propose their own: the vessel, with its fleshless jaw, skeletal limbs and open, birth-giving posture, belongs to the realm of the dead or of the ancestors, and to creation (Mikulska and Hermann Lejarazu, 2021, pp. 110–111).
A reading. Nothing on the Borgia page names ololiuhqui or an ointment. The "food of the gods" is one of at least three interpretations recorded for the scene, and the authors who connect it with Durán propose a different one (Mikulska and Hermann Lejarazu, 2021).
Commonly about 30–90 minutes after oral ingestion, but highly variable with the seed ensemble, bodily state and ceremonial context. Early phases may foreground heaviness, nausea, chills, warmth, changes in salivation and a drift toward inward attention.
Principal effects are often reported over roughly 5–8 hours, with the most absorptive or visionary phase within the first 2–4 hours and residual fatigue, dreaminess or reflective clarity extending beyond it. Historical experiments and whole-seed practice differ in their kinetics.
Variable. Alkaloid-positive and -negative lineages, fungal chemotypes and degradation change potency. In ritual use, intensity also concerns the authority and intelligibility of disclosure as well as sensory magnitude.
Dreamlike, hypnagogic and inwardly absorbed; slowed or discontinuous thought; closed-eye scenes, persons, animals and places; altered temporal sequence; auditory or verbal impressions; emotional revelation; and a felt transition between waking, sleep and vision.
Heaviness, fatigue, muscular relaxation or tension, gastric discomfort, vasoconstrictive coldness and uterine/visceral sensations can be phenomenologically prominent. The body may be read diagnostically.
A prior question organises ambiguous imagery into evidence. Faces may identify an offender; roads or houses locate an object; a voice names a medicine; animals or weather signal relational causes. Attendant interpretation and later verification complete the visionary event.
The profile lists effects the sources report, for each preparation separately, grouped by domain. Each row gives the grade, how often the sources say the effect occurs (only where they say so; most do not) and the kinds of source behind it. A chip naming a compound, such as “Trial · psilocybin”, means the evidence comes from studies of that compound rather than of the preparation itself; “partial” means the route, purity or dose differs from the traditional preparation, so the row cannot be graded above supported. The line under each preparation says which domains have evidence entered here. A domain with nothing entered has not yet been assessed in this profile; that is not a finding that the literature is silent, and the article may discuss it. Open a row for the note and the sources.
Evidence entered for 4 of 8 domains. Not yet entered: visual, self and unity, relation to other beings, states of consciousness. Discussed in the article above but not yet entered: visual, states of consciousness.
Lysergic acid amide (ergine) is the seeds’ principal alkaloid, and its concentration varies widely between batches (Castro et al., 2025). Given alone, ergine produced perceptual alteration and sedation; Hofmann’s self-observation recorded “fatigue, sedation, and sleep” (Isbell and Gorodetzky, 1965, p. 332). Colonial hostility, seed freshness, species and the questions put to the medicine all differ between the historical accounts (Sahagún, 1950–1982; Wasson, 1963).
Users’ reports of seeds of several morning glories and of Hawaiian baby woodrose describe visual and auditory distortions (Castro et al., 2025). Most of the cases reviewed took other seeds rich in LSA, chiefly Hawaiian baby woodrose, so this counts at partial weight.
Nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain were among the commonest symptoms across 189 people whose intoxication was described (Castro et al., 2025). Most of the cases reviewed took other seeds rich in LSA, chiefly Hawaiian baby woodrose, so this counts at partial weight.
Tremor, weakness and fatigue were recorded in a study stopped for its adverse effects, and ataxia among poison-centre cases (Castro et al., 2025). Most of the cases reviewed took other seeds rich in LSA, chiefly Hawaiian baby woodrose, so this counts at partial weight.
Hypertension and tachycardia were among the commonest signs, and blood pressure rose in a study of a seed preparation (Castro et al., 2025). Most of the cases reviewed took other seeds rich in LSA, chiefly Hawaiian baby woodrose, so this counts at partial weight.
Sahagún’s account emphasises frightening apparitions (Sahagún, 1950–1982). Anxiety and paranoid thoughts are among the reported effects of LSA-bearing seeds, and a quarter of users in one study had negative experiences (Castro et al., 2025). Most of the cases reviewed took other seeds rich in LSA, chiefly Hawaiian baby woodrose, so this counts at partial weight.
Euphoria is among the reported effects (Castro et al., 2025). Most of the cases reviewed took other seeds rich in LSA, chiefly Hawaiian baby woodrose, so this counts at partial weight.
Later Oaxacan reports describe a quieter, oracular state in which the source of an illness or the place of a missing object becomes visible; Zapotec reports foreground consultation in illness and misfortune (Wasson, 1963; Fields, 1969).
Sahagún records the loss of ordinary judgement (Sahagún, 1950–1982); confusion and disorientation are recorded among modern cases (Castro et al., 2025). Most of the cases reviewed took other seeds rich in LSA, chiefly Hawaiian baby woodrose, so this counts at partial weight.
Sahagún’s account emphasises frightening apparitions and loss of ordinary judgement, while later Oaxacan reports describe a quieter, more oracular state in which the source of illness or location of a missing object becomes visible. The two describe different situations. Colonial hostility, botanical species, seed freshness, ceremonial framing and the questions put to the medicine all differ. Accounts from Chinantec and Mazatec settings emphasise nighttime silence and the emergence of answer-like imagery; Zapotec reports foreground consultation in the treatment of illness and misfortune (Sahagún, 1950–1982; Wasson, 1963; Fields, 1969).
The common modern comparison with LSD is chemically intelligible but phenomenologically incomplete. Both involve lysergamides and serotonergic signalling, yet ololiuhqui reports are more often sedating, oneirogenic and somatically weighted than the prolonged bright wakefulness popularly associated with LSD. Isbell and Gorodetzky’s clinical work found ergine capable of perceptual alteration and sedation, but isolated-alkaloid experiments removed the prayer, darkness, question, whole-seed matrix and social interpretation that make divination a cultural practice (Isbell and Gorodetzky, 1965).
Images can unfold as dreamlike tableaux: a person performing an action, a road, dwelling, landscape, animal or hidden object. Their relevance depends on the question asked.
The answer may be heard as words, arrive as an internally voiced name or appear as a sudden certainty. Ethnographic “speech of the seed” is as much heard as seen.
Pain, pressure, purging, coldness or movement in a particular bodily region may be read as information about affliction. The difficult body and the revelatory body are one phenomenological channel.
Reports of locating thieves, objects or causes are culturally important but rarely documented through prospective methods. Their evidential force within a community may rest on later events, social consensus and therapeutic change.
“fatigue, sedation, and sleep”Summary of Hofmann’s ergine self-observation in Isbell and Gorodetzky (1965, p. 332); isolated ergine, not a ritual seed session
Ipomoea corymbosa is geographically extensive and can become abundant in disturbed habitats. Its conservation issues lie elsewhere than species-level scarcity. More fragile are local fungal chemotypes, selectively maintained vines, access to uncontaminated ritual seed, Indigenous-language names, specialist protocols and the social legitimacy of divinatory healing. Biocultural conservation requires distinctions between protecting a taxon, maintaining a symbiosis and sustaining a practice. In introduced environments, those aims may conflict with weed management, because vigorous vines can smother native vegetation (CABI, 2026; Beaulieu et al., 2021).
| Ritual circulation | Ethnographic accounts more often describe small-scale cultivation, specialist custody and interpersonal exchange than a large public market. A single mature vine can produce substantial seed, making social control of knowledge and access more important than acreage. |
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| Honey and ornament | The white flowers yield abundant nectar and the vine is grown ornamentally. Honey associated with xtabentún flowers supports a regional Yucatecan liqueur economy, while Caribbean Christmas flowering contributes to apiculture. These commodity chains are mostly separate from visionary seed use. |
| Online seed trade | International “ethnobotanical” and ornamental markets sell seeds under Rivea, Turbina and Ipomoea corymbosa. Misidentification with I. tricolor, Argyreia nervosa or non-alkaloid morning glories is recurrent; fungal infection and chemotype are seldom verified. |
| Research value | The vertically inherited Periglandula system is a model for plant–fungus coevolution, natural-product biosynthesis and defensive mutualism. Its pharmaceutical interest lies in pathway biology and ergoline diversity. |
The UN schedules name neither I. corymbosa nor ololiuhqui seeds. Regulation commonly attaches instead to particular alkaloids, preparations, intent, import rules or invasive-plant law. In the United States, lysergic acid amide is listed in Schedule III under federal controlled-substance regulations, while the living vine and untreated seed are unscheduled federally as such. The United Kingdom controls lysergide and named lysergamide derivatives through the Misuse of Drugs Act framework; exact treatment of a botanical specimen depends on composition and legal construction. Australia and some US states may additionally regulate particular morning glories as weeds or prohibited plants. Because categories differ sharply, “legal seeds” and “illegal plant” are both overgeneralisations (eCFR, 2026; Home Office, 2025; CABI, 2026).
Patent searches retrieve broad claims involving Ipomoea extracts, glycoresins, anticancer ipomoeassins, herbicidal control and engineered ergot-alkaloid pathways. WO2015195535A2 claims fungal genetic systems for producing lysergic acid; WO2023096577A2 claims recombinant production using, among other sources, pathway genes from Periglandula ipomoeae. Other applications merely include Turbina corymbosa in long lists of possible botanical source materials. The historical ololiuhqui tradition is outside all of them, and no granted patent located in this review owns the species as such. The more relevant questions concern disclosure of genetic-resource origin, access to fungal strains, benefit-sharing and Indigenous knowledge as prior art. The 2024 WIPO treaty establishes a patent-disclosure framework for inventions materially based on genetic resources or associated traditional knowledge, though implementation remains national (WIPO, 2024).
Beaulieu and colleagues mapped ergot alkaloids across a broad phylogeny, showing repeated evolutionary concentration, within-species variation and a positive relation between seed mass and alkaloid concentration. This replaces assumptions of uniform “LSA plants” with host–symbiont chemotypes (Beaulieu et al., 2021).
Microscopy and transcript studies in I. asarifolia trace fungus through young leaves, flowers and seeds and connect fungal presence with ergine-pathway expression. Comparative transfer to I. corymbosa remains a research task (Olaranont et al., 2022; 2025).
The first isolation and genome-scale characterisation of the cryptic I. tricolor symbiont expands the comparative system. It clarifies why related morning-glory medicines can carry distinct fungi and chemistries (Hazel et al., 2025).
Fagetti’s synthesis places I. corymbosa and I. tricolor within Mixtec, Nahua and Mazatec healing, attending to Catholic sacred figures, local names and therapeutic practice. It is the most recent substantial regional treatment located for this monograph (Fagetti, 2025).
No modern study combines community-led ethnography, botanical voucher, verified P. turbinae status, fresh-seed metabolomics and systematic phenomenology. Without that conjunction, chemical and cultural literatures continue to describe partly different objects.
Direct residue, seed or microfossil evidence securely attributable to I. corymbosa remains sparse. Non-destructive reanalysis of museum collections and colonial-period vessels could test iconographic and historical hypotheses without presuming them true.
| Mazatec Divinatory Medicine Complex | Ceremonial complex page: a plural diagnostic repertoire in which Virgin Seed traditions coexist with mushrooms, Salvia divinorum, cacao and other medicines without becoming interchangeable. PRIMARY CEREMONIAL COMPLEX |
|---|---|
| Ipomoea tricolor | Companion morning glory associated with tlitliltzin, badoh negro and other black-seed traditions; hosts a distinct symbiont now named Periglandula clandestina. SISTER DIVINATORY MEDICINE |
| Salvia divinorum | Species monograph: Mazatec ska María Pastora, a taxonomically and pharmacologically unrelated Virgin-associated divinatory medicine. REGIONAL RITUAL RELATION |
| Psilocybe spp. | Genus monograph: Mazatec ndi xi tjo and related mushroom medicines used in nocturnal consultation, cure and sacred speech, alongside parallel seed lineages. REGIONAL RITUAL RELATION |
| Argyreia nervosa | Asian-Pacific morning glory whose ergoline-bearing seeds became globally marketed as “Hawaiian baby woodrose”; chemically comparable, and outside the documented Mesoamerican ololiuhqui tradition. CHEMICAL COMPARATOR |
| Claviceps purpurea | Species monograph: pathogenic grass ergot and the historical source of ergot pharmacology; related fungal chemistry, radically different ecology and cultural history. FUNGAL COMPARATOR |
| Peyote traditions | Species monograph · ceremonial complex page: A distinct Mesoamerican/North American ceremonial complex whose colonial archive intersects with ololiuhqui in extirpation texts, while botany, chemistry, institutions and ritual geographies differ. HISTORICAL COMPARATOR |
| Heimia salicifolia | Species monograph: sinicuichi, read with ololiuhqui among the flowers carved on the Xochipilli statue. XOCHIPILLI STATUE |