Jergon SachaDracontium spruceanum

Did you know?

• Jergón sacha means, roughly, "false jergón". Sacha is a Quechua word used for things that are wild or only resemble the real thing, and jergón is a local name for the common lancehead, a snake of the Amazon^{[9, 10, 11, 12]}.

• It belongs to the arum family, the same plant family as taro and the giant corpse flower^{[1, 13]}.

• Botanists now regard several plants once described as separate species, including Dracontium loretense, as one species, D. spruceanum^{[1, 2]}.

• Its tuber has yielded oxylipins that were new to science; chemists later built them in the laboratory to confirm their exact structure^{[6, 7]}.

• In the Colombian Amazon, the tuber is listed among the region's lesser-known food plants^{[1, 5]}.

• Like other Dracontium, it usually sends up just one leaf, on a very long stalk covered in striking bands^[3].

Origins and history

Jergón sacha is a plant of the forest floor. It grows from a large underground tuber, and like other Dracontium species it usually sends up a single big, deeply divided leaf on a very long stalk with striking banded markings, followed in season by a flower spike wrapped in a hood-like spathe, dark brown-purple outside and reddish purple within^{[1, 3]}. It belongs to the wet tropical forests of Central and South America, from Costa Rica and Panama to the Amazon basin^{[1, 4]}.

Botanists first described it under the name Echidnium spruceanum, and in 1996 the botanist G.H. Zhu moved it into Dracontium, a genus found only in the Americas^{[1, 2, 3]}. The plant many herbal buyers know as Dracontium loretense is now listed by the major botanical databases as part of the same species^{[1, 2]}.

Its common name comes from Peru. There, jergón is a name for the common lancehead, a snake found across the Amazon, from the Guianas and Venezuela to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil^{[10, 11]}. Add the Quechua sacha, which marks a wild or look-alike version of something familiar, and the plant becomes the "false jergón"^{[9, 12]}. The tuber is the part people harvest: in parts of Ecuador and Colombia it is prepared for traditional use, and in Ecuador and the Colombian Amazon it is also eaten as food^{[1, 5]}.

Traditional uses

Clinical studies of jergón sacha in people are still few, but the plant has a long place in Amazonian folk tradition and remains part of Peruvian traditional practice today^[8].

• The tuber is the part that matters

  Across its range, it is the underground tuber, often sold as the rhizome, that is dug and prepared for traditional use.^[5]

• Digestive comfort

  In Ecuador the rhizome is scraped and steeped in hot water as a traditional tea for the stomach. Jergón sacha supports digestive comfort.*^[5]

• A food as well as a folk plant

  In the Colombian Amazon the tuber is counted among the region's food plants, and in Ecuador the rhizome is eaten too, a reminder that jergón sacha has fed people as well as served their traditions.^{[1, 5]}

Plant compounds

The chemistry of the tuber is still being mapped. Researchers have isolated oxylipins from it, oxygen-containing compounds built from fatty acids, several of them new to science, and chemists later made them in the laboratory to confirm their structures^{[6, 7]}. The tuber also contains a range of other lipid compounds, including ceramides and cerebrosides^[14].