Ask for chuchupate at an herb stall in northern Mexico and you get pieces of dry, woody root with a sharp smell of celery. Chuchupate root is Ligusticum porteri, a member of the carrot and parsley family that grows high in the Sierra Madre Occidental. English speakers call the same plant osha, and it is the plant in Mara's Bear Root tincture.
Where chuchupate root grows in Mexico
UNAM's flora of Mexico database (eFloraMex) lists Ligusticum porteri as native to three Mexican states: Chihuahua, Durango and Sonora. A 2010 UNAM thesis by Griselda Zárate Cruz places it in the northern Sierra Madre Occidental, in pine and oak forest. Her study plants came from Bocoyna, Chihuahua, at about 2,333 m.
A report prepared for the CITES Plants Committee (document PC10.9.3) gives the species an altitude range of 2,050 to 3,171 m, in moist upland meadows and ravines. The plant also grows in high mountains further north, where the name osha took over. Our full guide to osha root covers the plant across that whole range. Mara's Bear Root is a mountain plant of Northern Mexico.
One plant, at least a dozen names
Zárate Cruz collected the regional names in her thesis. In Chihuahua and Mexico City, sellers say chuchupate, chuchupaste, chuchufaste or chuchupasto. In Durango it is raíz de cochino, and across Chihuahua and Durango, yerba del cochino. The Rarámuri (Tarahumara) of the Chihuahua sierra call it wasía. Raíz de oso and medicina de oso, bear root and bear medicine, sit in the same list next to perejil indio and apio de monte.
The bear names come from a story told wherever the plant grows: bears dig up the root and chew it. The observer Shawn Sigstedt watched Kodiak bears chew the root and rub it into their fur. If you have seen both names on labels, bear root and osha root are the same plant.
The word chuchupate is older than any label. Botanists Robert Bye and Edelmira Linares wrote in 1986 that it appears in records of New Spain from 1777 and may come from the Nahuatl chichipatli, which would mean "dog medicinal herb".
The name does not point to one plant everywhere. In the Lower Rio Grande, Bye and Linares found chuchupate used for a tree, Myroxylon balsamum, and Zárate Cruz notes a "chuchupate complex" of the two plants sold in markets in Mexico and the United States. In California, the Chumash name chuchupaste belonged to a third plant, Lomatium californicum, according to M. Kat Anderson's Tending the Wild (2005). In the Sierra Madre, chuchupate means Ligusticum porteri.
Osha stopped more than half the growth of the TB bacterium at the lowest concentration tested.
How it's sold in Mexican markets
Zárate Cruz describes chuchupate as "de gran comercio en mercados de plantas", heavily traded in plant markets, and says it reaches buyers as fragmented pieces of root. Most people meet it that way, chopped and dried, in a bag with nothing on it about species, where it was dug or when.
The trade crosses the border. In 1986 Bye and Linares found the root sold in pharmacies in Colorado's San Luis Valley, supplied by Arizona wholesalers who sold it under the name chuchupate. The CITES report notes that Tarahumara people in the Sierra Madre formed a local business to harvest and process the plant.
Rarámuri wasía tea and New Mexico chuchupate tea
Rarámuri families brewed wasía root as a tea for stomach pain and fever. Zárate Cruz writes that the Tarahumara also prize the root as a talisman, carry it into religious ritual and drink its infusions in ceremonies.
North of the border, Hispanic ranchers in New Mexico kept the Mexican name (Dodson and Dunmire, 2007). Chuchupate tea was a household remedy there for colds and sore throats, and in Colorado's San Luis Valley the dried leaves went into bean dishes as a seasoning, alone or with oregano.
¿Chuchupate para qué sirve?
Spanish speakers often search this question, and the answer in the records is a list of traditional uses. Zárate Cruz's thesis records, from Mexican and Native sources:
- infusions of the root for stomach pain and colic
- the root as a home remedy for colds, cough and bronchitis
- alcohol extracts of the root for sore throat
- poultices on insect and scorpion stings
- leaves and root as a condiment
Laboratory work has followed the tradition. In 2008, researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso tested the root the Rarámuri use, and osha stopped more than half the growth of the TB bacterium at the lowest concentration they tested.
Taste
Earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite. Herbalist Michael Moore described the smell of the root as butterscotch and celery (1979), and Zárate Cruz found the dried rhizome strongly aromatic, close to anise, and not bitter. The celery note makes sense once you know the family. Chuchupate is a relative of lovage, and Bye and Linares recorded garden lovage being used as a stand-in for wild osha in Colorado.
Why a tincture beats a bag of loose root
Chuchupate has never been grown at scale. The CITES report states there is no successful cultivation, so nearly every root on the market was dug from the wild, often from plants more than 10 years old. United Plant Savers lists osha as At-Risk.
Then there is the look-alike problem. Above ground, chuchupate resembles poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), and the CITES report notes that herbalists often use related Ligusticum species interchangeably, and buyers may not record which one was collected. Add the other plants that share the name, and a market bag of chopped root carries no proof of what is inside.
A tincture from a trusted source settles those questions before the bottle reaches you. Bear Root is a tincture of Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract.
Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture
50 ml dropper bottle. Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico.
Add to bagIt also fits a normal day. Squeeze one or two droppers under the tongue, hold for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into water, tea, juice or a smoothie. At one to two droppers a day, a 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days, and it sits on a desk or in a bag without a kettle or a strainer.
Glass decides how the extract keeps. Dark amber glass is a step in the right direction. The gold standard is dark Miron glass, which keeps light off the liquid, and it is what Bear Root comes in.
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
Is chuchupate the same as osha?
Yes. In northern Mexico and New Mexico, chuchupate is the Spanish name for Ligusticum porteri, the plant English speakers call osha and bear root.
What does the word chuchupate mean?
Robert Bye and Edelmira Linares suggested in 1986 that it may come from the Nahuatl chichipatli, which would mean "dog medicinal herb". The word shows up in records of New Spain from 1777.
Where does chuchupate grow in Mexico?
In the northern Sierra Madre Occidental, in the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sonora, at roughly 2,050 to 3,171 m.
Is raíz de oso the same as chuchupate?
Yes. Raíz de oso (bear root) and medicina de oso are recorded names for the same plant, from the story that bears dig up and chew the root.
