CarquejaBaccharis genistelloides

Did you know?

• Carqueja has almost no leaves. Three flat green wings run along its stems in their place, with only a few tiny leaves at the joints^[6].

• Brazilians call it carqueja-amarga or carqueja-amargosa, "bitter carqueja", and the bitter taste is one of the checks used to identify the dried herb^{[4, 5, 6]}.

• In Portugal, carqueja is an entirely different plant: a member of the pea family that grows wild in the country's scrubland^[14].

• Each carqueja plant is either male or female, and researchers have compared the essential oils of the two^{[5, 8, 11]}.

• In Paraguay, in the Guaraní language, the Brazilian carqueja is called jaguarete ka'a^{[4, 13]}.

• In the Andes of Peru and Bolivia it has local names of its own, such as quimsa-kuchu, cuchu-cuchu, nudo-nudo ("knot-knot") and tres espigas ("three spikes")^[16].

Origins and history

Carqueja is a shrubby perennial^{[5, 14]}. Instead of ordinary leaves it has green, membrane-thin wings along its branching stems, usually three to a stem^[6]. Its tiny whitish-yellow flower heads cluster in broken spikes toward the tips of the branches^{[5, 6]}, with male and female flowers on separate plants^{[5, 8]}. It belongs to Baccharis, a genus of more than 500 species spread across the Americas^{[5, 9]}.

The Andean species was first described in 1786, as Conyza genistelloides, in the botanical encyclopedia of the naturalist Lamarck, and was moved to Baccharis in 1807^{[3, 4]}. Brazil's carqueja followed: the botanist Christian Friedrich Lessing described it in 1831, and Augustin Pyramus de Candolle gave it the name Baccharis trimera in 1836^{[2, 3]}. In 1882 the great Flora Brasiliensis went the other way and classed the Brazilian plant as a mere variety of the Andean one, B. genistelloides var. trimera^[2]. Botanists still disagree about where one carqueja ends and the next begins. Kew's Plants of the World Online keeps B. genistelloides and B. trimera as separate species^{[1, 2]}, Brazil's official flora accepts B. trimera^[4], and some databases and Brazilian studies use a third name, Baccharis crispa, for the Brazilian plant^{[4, 17]}. Raintree's labels name B. genistelloides, and one of our formulas lists B. trimera as well.

In Brazil, the dried, chopped stems are steeped in freshly boiled water, covered, strained and drunk as a tea^{[5, 6]}. The herb is sold in pharmacies for this purpose, and quality checks on the dried herb look for its three-winged stems and bitter taste^[6]. Carqueja is also listed in the Brazilian Pharmacopoeia, the country's official book of quality standards^{[6, 9]}, and Brazil's official herbal formulary gives a recipe for a carqueja infusion made from the dried aerial parts^[15]. In southern Brazil the herb is also commonly added to yerba mate and to chimarrão, the region's traditional mate drink^[5].

Traditional uses

Clinical studies of carqueja in people are still few, but its traditional use in southern South America is rich and long standing^{[5, 7]}.

• A bitter digestive tea

  In Brazil the stems are steeped as a bitter tea, traditionally taken for digestive comfort, and the country's official herbal formulary lists carqueja tea for the digestion. Carqueja supports healthy digestion.*^{[5, 6, 7, 15]}

• Liver support

  Carqueja has a long tradition of use for the liver in Brazil. It supports healthy liver function.*^{[5, 8, 10]}

• Antioxidant compounds

  Carqueja provides naturally occurring antioxidant compounds.*^{[8, 10]}

Plant compounds

Carqueja contains a wide range of flavonoids, including apigenin, hispidulin, eupatorin, quercetin and rutin^{[5, 8, 10]}. It also contains caffeoylquinic acids, the family of plant compounds that includes chlorogenic acid, together with diterpenes, tannins and an essential oil rich in sesquiterpenes^{[5, 6, 8, 9]}. The oil's characteristic compound is carquejyl acetate, named after carqueja itself, found alongside carquejol^{[8, 11]}.