Screw Tree

In Papua New Guinea, the fruit of an as yet

unidentified Pandanus species is said to be used or

to have been used as a hallucinogen. Unfortunately,

we have no dependable ethnographic or

ethnobotanical information about this. The fruits

of several Pandanus species have been found to

contain N,N-DMT (Schultes and Hofmann 1992,

52*). The species Pandanus antaresensis St. John is

used in Papua New Guinea as an analgesic (Ott 1993, 401*). The Australian Aborigines make a

wine from the fruits of Pandanus spiralis R. Br.

(Bock 1994, 147*).

In Nepal, the screw pine (Pandanus nepalensis

St. John [syn. Pandanus furcatus auct. non. Roxb.])

is considered sacred to Ganesha, the Hindu

elephant-headed god. The leaves of the kevada or

aromatic screw pine Pandanus odoratissimus L.

[syn. P. tectorius auct. non. Soland. ex Parkinson],

which is called ketaka in Sanskrit, are offered to his

father Shiva (Majupuria and Joshi 1988, 170f.*).

In Ayurvedic medicine, the leaves are used as a

tonic aphrodisiac, while in Thailand they are

often used as a cooking spice (Norman 1991,66*).

In Hawaii, root tips that grow above the ground

are used together with sugarcane juice to make a

tonic (Krauss 1981, 6*). The flowers contain a

stimulating essential oil composed of benzyl

benzoate, benzyl acetate, benzyl alcohol, geranol,

linalool, guiacol, phenethyl alcohol, and aldehydes

(Majupuria and Joshi 1988, 171*). In India, the

ripe spadix of Pandanus tectorius Parkins. ex Du Roi

[syn. Pandanus odoratissimus 1. f.] is the source of

the so-called kewda perfume, one ofwhose uses is to

aromatize smoking tobacco (Nicotiana rustica,

Nicotiana tabacum) (Bartels 1993, 122*).

In the Seychelles, a number of species known

as vacoa are regarded as aphrodisiacs (MiillerEbeling

and Ratsch 1989, 72*).