The Osha Root Snakes Story (Why People Carried Chuchupate)

Type "osha root snakes" into a search bar and you find the same short line on shop page after shop page: keep a piece of the root in your pocket and rattlesnakes stay away. The line is much older than those shops. In 1983 and 1984, the ethnobotanists Robert Bye and Edelmira Linares interviewed Hispano families in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and wrote it down. Carrying a piece of osha against snakebite was a local practice, and the older people, they were told, "always carried a piece of osha in a small bag or pouch."

Osha is Ligusticum porteri, a member of the carrot and parsley family and a relative of lovage. It grows in high mountain country between about 1,500 and 3,500 m. In the snake story it is the root that matters, dug in the spruce forest and kept close.

Does osha root keep snakes away?

For the people who carried it, that was the belief, and it was common enough to make it into the scientific record more than once. A 2013 Kansas Biological Survey report on wild osha (Kindscher, Yang, Long, Craft and Loring) lists "roots used to ward off rattlesnakes" in its table of the plant's recorded uses. That table draws on Daniel Moerman's ethnobotany database, Michael Moore's books, Leonora Curtin's work on the upper Rio Grande and earlier studies of the Mescalero Apache. It names the Apache, Navajo, Ute, Zuni and other Pueblo peoples, the Lakota and Hispanic communities as osha users.

The snake use sits in that table next to colds, sore throats and stomach aches. To the families who relied on osha, guarding against rattlesnakes was one more job for a root they already kept in the house.

Where the osha root snakes story was written down

Bye and Linares published their San Luis Valley notes in the Journal of Ethnobiology in 1986. Their informants lived in Alamosa, Capulin and La Jara, and local people checked the plant specimens. Osha, they wrote, was the most popular remedio in the valley.

The details are specific. People dug the root in late summer and early fall, after the leaves had turned yellow. Shavings were chewed or brewed as tea, and the leaves were dried slowly in the shade and cooked with oregano in beans. Pharmacies in the valley sold both locally dug root and root bought from out-of-state suppliers. And people carried a piece of it on them, against snakebite and as a general habit of the older generation.

That last habit is the heart of osha root folklore across the Southwest. The root went with you, in a pouch, a pocket or a saddlebag.

Chuchupate, chuchupaste and other names

In New Mexico, Hispanic ranchers call osha chuchupate. Spanish speakers also use chupate, chuchupaste, chuchupastle, chuchufate and hierba de cochino. Bye and Linares thought the name chuchupate reached the San Luis Valley with root shipped in from Arizona suppliers when the local root was scarce.

English has its own long list: osha, bear root, Colorado cough root, wild celery, mountain lovage, Porter's lovage and loveroot. The Rarámuri of Northern Mexico call it wasía, and the Akimel O'odham call it jujubáádi. Bear root and osha are the same plant under two names, which we cover in bear root vs osha root.

It smells like celery, only louder

Every description of the root starts with the smell. Bye and Linares called it a "characteristically odoriferous rootstock." Botanists compare the odor to celery and butterscotch, and foragers use that spicy celery smell to tell osha apart from its poisonous look-alikes. The root carries Z-ligustilide, measured at 0.15 to 2.5% of the root.

In the snake story, the smell is the part people remember. A root you can smell through a cloth bag is an easy thing to trust on a trail through rattlesnake country, and the older people in the San Luis Valley kept it on them as a matter of course.

Bears found it first, according to the Diné

The other famous name, bear root, has its own story. The Diné credit the bear with leading them to osha. The ethnobotanist Shawn Sigstedt, who lived and studied with the Diné and is a biology professor at Colorado Mountain College, tested it with two captive brown bears in Colorado Springs. When he gave them osha root, the female chewed it into a mash and spread it across her shoulders and chest. Both bears rubbed the pulp onto a tree and then rubbed their bodies against the bark.

The Lakota name for the plant is mato tapejuta, bear medicine. The Diné and the Lakota live hundreds of miles apart, and both tied the root to the bear.

From a pouch on the belt to a bottle in your pack

The constant in all of these stories is that people kept osha with them. Today the practical way to do that is an extract in a small bottle. Raw root makes a poor travelling companion now, for reasons that have nothing to do with tradition:

• Nearly all osha is wild-dug, often from plants more than 10 years old, and United Plant Savers lists it as At-Risk.
• Osha looks like poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and other members of the carrot family, so digging your own is a job for experts.
• Dried root loses its aroma over time. A tincture holds the root's character sealed away from air and light.
• A dropper gives you the same measured amount every time.

Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture

50 ml dropper bottle. Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico.

Add to bag

Bear Root is osha, a mountain plant of Northern Mexico, from the same country where Rarámuri families brewed it as a tea. It is extracted and bottled in 50 ml of dark Miron glass. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract.

What Bear Root is like in your day

Unscrew the cap and the celery smell from the ranchers' pouches is right there. The taste is earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite from the root. Take 1 to 2 droppers a day. Hold it under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into water, tea, juice or a smoothie if you prefer it softer.

The bottle rides in the hip pocket of a day pack, a glovebox or a desk drawer, and at 1 to 2 droppers a day it lasts 30 to 50 days. For more on the plant itself, from its range to its chemistry, read our complete guide to osha 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

Does osha root keep snakes away?

That is the tradition. Hispano families in Colorado's San Luis Valley carried a piece of osha against snakebite, as Bye and Linares recorded in 1983 and 1984, and a 2013 Kansas Biological Survey report lists warding off rattlesnakes among the root's recorded uses.

What is chuchupate?

Chuchupate is the Spanish name for osha (Ligusticum porteri) used by Hispanic ranchers in New Mexico. Chuchupaste, chuchupastle and chuchufate are variant spellings of the same name.

Why is osha called bear root?

The Diné credit the bear with leading them to the root, and the Lakota name is mato tapejuta, bear medicine. Shawn Sigstedt watched captive brown bears chew the root and spread the mash into their fur.

Is Colorado cough root the same plant as osha?

Yes. Colorado cough root is another English name for Ligusticum porteri, along with bear root, wild celery and mountain lovage.