BoldoPeumus boldus

Did you know?

• Boldo is the only species in its genus, Peumus^[4].

• The word boldo comes from Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people. One explanation links it to Mapuche words meaning "to sprout again" and "to put out new roots"^{[5, 7]}.

• Every boldo tree is either male or female, so trees of both sexes must grow near each other before any fruit can form^[6].

• Its small green fruit is sweet and aromatic and can be eaten raw or cooked, and the dried fruits have been strung as beads for necklaces^{[5, 6]}.

• The leaves and bark can be used in the kitchen as a seasoning^[6].

• Chileans once used the bark to tan leather and burned the wood for charcoal^{[5, 6]}.

Origins and history

Boldo is a tree of Chile, native to the country's central and southern regions^{[3, 6]}. It grows slowly, as a shrub or small tree up to about 6 meters (20 feet) tall^{[2, 5, 6]}. Its evergreen leaves are strongly aromatic, and small pinkish-white flowers open in August and September, in the southern late winter and early spring^{[5, 6]}.

Its common name came from the Mapuche, whose language, Mapudungun, gave Spanish the word boldo^[7], and among the Araucanian peoples of Chile boldo was a traditional tonic^[6]. The naturalist Juan Ignacio Molina named the tree Peumus boldus in 1782, in his Saggio sulla storia naturale del Chili, an essay on the natural history of Chile written in Italian^[3].

In Chile, boldo leaves are often taken as an herbal tea^[7]. The tree has served people in other ways as well. Its sweet little fruit is eaten, its tannin-rich bark was used to tan hides and as a dye, its wood was burned for charcoal, and boldo extract has been used to flavor alcoholic drinks^{[5, 6]}. Boldo leaf reached Europe around 1870, when it was first described there by Bourgoin and Verne, and explorers also took it to North America and Britain^{[2, 5]}. In Germany it was included in the Commission E herbal monographs. Today boldo leaf is defined in the European Pharmacopoeia, and the European Medicines Agency has published an EU herbal monograph on it^{[1, 2, 6]}. In Brazil, the name boldo is also used for an unrelated plant of the mint family, so in Portuguese the Chilean tree is called boldo-do-chile, "boldo of Chile"^{[4, 8]}.

Traditional uses

Clinical studies of boldo in people are still few^{[2, 5]}, but its traditional use is long and well documented, and European regulators have published an official monograph on it^{[1, 2]}.

• A leaf tea

  In Chile, the dried leaves are steeped in hot water and drunk as a tea, traditionally for digestive comfort.*^{[1, 7]}

• Healthy digestion

  Boldo supports healthy digestion.*^{[1, 6]}

• Bile flow

  Boldo leaf supports healthy bile flow and digestion.*^{[5, 6]}

Plant compounds

Boldo leaf contains isoquinoline alkaloids of the aporphine type, the best known of which is boldine^{[2, 5]}. Its aroma comes from an essential oil that makes up about 2 to 2.5 percent of the dried leaf and is rich in 1,8-cineole (also called eucalyptol), p-cymene and ascaridole^{[2, 5]}. The leaf also contains flavonol glycosides^{[2, 5]}.