Osha Root History, From a 600-Year-Old Medicine Bundle to Today

Sometime in the 1980s, Margaret and Bryce Patterson found a leather bundle buried under a rock ledge in southeastern Utah, in a pit lined with juniper bark. Inside were roots, basketry bark, a bone and seed necklace and animal parts. One packet held osha roots. Osha root history is usually told as a list of tribes and uses. Told in order, it runs from that ledge to a Latin name given in 1888, through a modern herb trade that nearly stripped the mountains, to the families who still dig it and carry it. For the full plant profile, start with our complete guide to osha root.

What is osha root?

Osha is Ligusticum porteri, a member of the carrot and parsley family (Apiaceae) and a close relative of lovage. It grows high, from about 1,500 to 3,500 m. Kew's Plants of the World Online lists it from Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango in Mexico north through Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming. The prize has always been the root, dark and hairy at the crown, with a sharp celery smell.

It also goes by bear root, chuchupate and Colorado cough root. Our post on bear root vs osha root covers why so many names point to one plant.

Osha root history in order

200 to 600 years ago, a bundle in Utah

The American Herbal Pharmacopoeia dates the Patterson Bundle to roughly 200 to 600 years old. Clinical herbalist Merry Lycett Harrison, writing in HerbalGram (issue 55, 2002), reported that carbon dating put the leather wrapping at 400 to 600 years, which places it before European contact. It is the oldest physical record of osha in human hands.

Long before botanists, the nations of the mountains

Ethnobotanist Natasha Myhal's 2017 University of Kansas study counts fifteen tribes documented using osha. The records follow the mountains. The Zuni chewed the root during curing ceremonies and took crushed root in water for sore throats. Diné tradition says the bear gave the people this medicine. Far to the south, in the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico, the Rarámuri call the plant wasía and brewed it as a tea for stomach pain and fever.

The Southern Ute name is kwiyag'atu tukapi, and they used it for colds and for spiritual protection. The Lakota name, mato tapejuta, means bear medicine. Myhal also records that the Comanche, Apache and Lakota used osha hundreds of miles outside the plant's range, so the root travelled by trade. The Comanche took it for pneumonia. Several groups carried pieces in their moccasins or pouches to keep rattlesnakes away.

Chuchupate in the New Mexico villages

Spanish speaking families in New Mexico took up the root as chuchupate, a household tea for colds and sore throats. The word osha itself may come from a Pueblo word, possibly the Zuni anshe, meaning bear, according to Native Languages of the Americas. English language books have printed "osha root" since 1873.

1888, a Latin name

American botanists John Merle Coulter and Joseph Nelson Rose described the plant as Ligusticum porteri in their Revision of North American Umbelliferae, page 86, in 1888. They named it for Thomas Conrad Porter (1822 to 1901), a botanist and clergyman. By then people had been digging the root for centuries.

Where the bear legend comes from

The story behind the name bear root is old, and it got a modern witness in Shawn Sigstedt, a biology professor at Colorado Mountain College who lived with a Navajo family in northern New Mexico for seven years. In Colorado Springs he gave dried osha to two captive brown bears. The female chewed it to a mash and spread it over her shoulders, chest and head. Decades later, motion cameras on his ranch outside Steamboat Springs filmed two wild bears, months apart, rubbing osha pulp on a tree and then rubbing against the bark. "We've learned that the ancient beliefs have a biological basis," he told the Steamboat Pilot. Herbalists also tell of bears digging for the root when they wake from hibernation.

The herb trade, then the At-Risk list

In the 20th century osha moved from village shelves into national herbal catalogues, almost all of it dug wild. Cultivation has mostly failed, so roots are dug from stands that can be over ten years old. Reported wild harvest hit 5,200 kg in 1999. That year the US Forest Service put a three-year moratorium on harvest in its forests, and by 2015 the reported figure had dropped to 425 kg. United Plant Savers lists osha as At-Risk. In 2018 the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia released its osha monograph, produced with United Plant Savers.

Research arrived too. In 2008 Oscar Beltran at the University of Texas at El Paso tested the root the Rarámuri use against the tuberculosis bacterium in the lab and recorded more than half its growth stopped at the lowest concentration tested.

How people carry it today

The Jicarilla Apache Nation manages and gathers osha on its reservation in northern New Mexico and travels to its traditional lands in Colorado to collect it. Ethnobotanist Kelly Kindscher's 2019 paper in Economic Botany found that stands with a third of their plants harvested had recovered after five years. Work like his decides how much wild osha the next generation finds.

For most people outside those mountains, the form that fits daily life is the tincture. A root has to be stored, cut and simmered. An alcohol extract is measured in droppers, keeps for months in dark glass and goes where you go. That is the form Mara makes.

Bear Root, the same plant in a dropper bottle

Mara's Bear Root is osha, a mountain plant of Northern Mexico, from the same northern Mexican mountains where the Rarámuri call it wasía. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract. It tastes earthy and warming, with the sharp, celery-like bite people have described for centuries.

Take 1 to 2 droppers a day. Hold it under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into a morning or evening tea. Some people add a dropper to their water bottle after a hike or a run. It fits a daily ritual any time of year. The 50 ml bottle is dark Miron glass, which keeps light off the extract, and lasts 30 to 50 days at that dose. A 600-year-old bundle and a dropper on your desk hold the same root.

Bear Root considerations

Contains alcohol. Not recommended during pregnancy. If you're nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions people ask about osha's past

Is osha root still harvested from the wild?

Almost all of it is, since cultivation has mostly failed. United Plant Savers lists osha as At-Risk, and the US Forest Service paused harvest in its forests for three years from 1999.

What is the osha root origin?

Osha is native to high mountains from Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango in Northern Mexico up to Wyoming. The oldest physical record is osha root in the Patterson Bundle from southeastern Utah, dated to 200 to 600 years old.

Where does the name osha come from?

The origin is uncertain. Native Languages of the Americas suggests a Pueblo source, possibly the Zuni anshe, meaning bear, and English books have used "osha root" since 1873.

Who named Ligusticum porteri?

John Merle Coulter and Joseph Nelson Rose published the name in 1888. The species name honours botanist Thomas Conrad Porter.

What were traditional bear root uses?

Records include Zuni use in curing ceremonies and for sore throats, Rarámuri tea for stomach pain and fever, Comanche use for pneumonia and New Mexico chuchupate tea for colds.