We’ve all had moments of déjà vu. Recently, while working alongside Pooja Pant, a former research scientist at the National Arboretum and a native of Nepal, we got talking about herbs from her homeland. I quickly realized during the conversation that Nepalese herbs were not in my wheelhouse…or were they? Some of the plants and their uses sounded strikingly familiar, but I couldn’t place why. Clearly, this was an area of growth for my herbal knowledge, and yet, the plants seemed familiar enough to generate that universal sign of recognition: the face scrunch with hand on chin. Hoping to pull that thread I initially identified, I reconnected with Pooja after our first conversation to get her insights into what she considers the most notable herbs in Nepalese culture.
Have We Met?
There’s a perception that Nepalese herbs are just an amalgamation of plants from Nepal, India, and Tibet, which is partially true (they are neighbors, of course); many of Nepal’s commonly used herbs do overlap with those of India and Tibet. But, despite its small size, Nepal has distinctive ecosystems and habitats—some of them alpine—that support unique taxa associated with each of those regions. “With elevations ranging from less than 100 meters to over 8,000 meters, [Nepal] has eight climate zones from tropical to perpetual snow” (Wikipedia, n.d.). Within a very short hiking distance, an intrepid herbalist might encounter sultry plants defying monsoon-season floods along the coast all the way up great mountainsides to find dainty, lilliputian flowers hunkered along the unforgiving frost line of the Himalayas. Such climatic variation can’t help but support incredible herbal diversity (Flora, n.d.). Given that so many species indigenous to Nepal come from those alpine or subalpine regions, gardeners in other parts of the world would be hard-pressed to grow them, let alone be familiar with their names. (I’m raising my hand.)
“Today, almost 90% of Nepalese rely on subsistence agriculture, with plants performing a vital role as arable crops, fodder, fruit and vegetables, fuel, building materials and medicines.…ethnobotanists are busy documenting the wealth of indigenous knowledge for posterity. So far over 1500 plants…have been recorded as having at least one use, including more than 650 used as food plants and over 1000 species of wild plants used for medicine” (Flora, n.d.).
According to Pooja, Nepalese kitchens do share numerous “common staple herbs and spices such as ginger, garlic, turmeric, fenugreek seeds, cilantro, cumin, asafoetida, green chiles, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, cayenne pepper, fennel seeds and so on” with their geographical neighbors. But the similarities diverge from there. For example, have you ever heard of timur? Or what about panch aunle? I hadn’t.
You Seem So Familiar!
Similar to other cultures around the world that rely heavily on their native plants for subsistence, the local Nepalese flora is used not just for culinary purposes, but also for medicinal ones, as expressed by the Flora of Nepal website. Pooja shared with me that timur is a spice that produces a tingling or numbing sensation and is used in many traditional Nepalese dishes, such as soups, stews, and mo:mo dumplings. Additionally, they use it to help relieve toothaches and stimulate the appetite. This was particularly interesting to me, because I know of another plant that we happen to grow in the National Herb Garden called Sichuan pepper that has a similar numbing effect on the tongue and is used in Sichuan cooking. Ah hah! I knew I had an association with Nepalese herbs somewhere. This was it. A quick look at timur’s scientific name, Zanthoxylum armatum, and I understood the similarities with our Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum or Z. simulans). It is also in the genus Zanthoxylum, so the two plants are cousins and have similar behavioral characteristics.
Aconitum spicatum, known in Nepal as bikh, is another medicinal herb found in the subalpine and alpine zones. Again, you may recognize the genus Aconitum, like I did, but usually in association with Aconitum napellus, or monkshood, a highly poisonous, yet beautiful, garden plant. Though used medicinally in Nepal for the treatment of numerous conditions, it should be noted that this species has the same toxicity as that of monkshood (Nyirimigabo et al., 2014). Even so, the Nepalese people have learned how to harness bikh’s chemistry for improving their people’s health.
Acorus calamus, known as bojo, is considered an extremely popular medicinal herb. It is found growing in the temperate zones around the country. Acorus is not unique to Nepal, though; in fact, it is a plant that grows in Asia, Europe, and North America (see also previous blog post on Acorus—another association!) (NHLP, n.d.). The fact that it is universally known lends credence to its traditional use in herbal medicine. According to the 2021 review by Oli et al., Acorus is one of the most frequently used herbs by the majority of Nepalese ethnic groups, particularly in Ayurvedic and allopathic medicine. The rhizome aids various health conditions, “like throat inflammation, common cold, chest pain, bronchitis, whooping cough and to open the respiratory passages.”
Pooja also highlighted a plant completely new to me: Dactylorhiza hatagirea, or panch aunle in Nepalese. Examining the botanical Latin, you can decipher right away that the plant’s root might look something like a hand (dactyl = fingers; rhiza = root), and sure enough, the root sports 3 – 5 “fingers.” “Indigenous people use it for treating numerous health problems such as diarrhoea, dysentery, bone fracture, wounds and sex stimulant. It contains many phytochemicals such as Dactylose A, B; Dactylorhin A-E, resveratrol and trans-stilbene. Its pharmacological importance has been established by several studies examining its anti-microbial, antioxidant, anti-cancerous, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic and neuropharmacological activities” (Shrivastava and Jain, 2023). This beautiful, purple-flowered orchid is found in subalpine and alpine zones but is a critically endangered species due to overharvesting and other factors. (Panch aunle is now strictly protected from collection and sale.)
Somlata (Ephedra gerardiana) is used medicinally, as well, and is yet another of the country’s high-altitude-loving plants. While this species is employed in several healing modalities, particularly in the East, the Nepalese people mainly use it to treat various respiratory conditions, such as hay fever and asthma (Choudhary et al., 2021). Its chemistry, which includes ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, makes it important in traditional Nepalese medicine for a multitude of other conditions as well (Nazar et al., 2023). If any of this rings a distant bell in your head, it might be because the United States Food and Drug Administration banned ephedrine in 2004, where it was used for weight loss and athletic-performance enhancement, because of unsafe side effects (WebMD, n.d.). Unfortunately, because somlata is such a popular medicinal plant for so many in Nepal (and elsewhere), it, too, has landed on the endangered species list from overharvesting (Rinchen et al., 2021).
Meeting You Again for the First Time
With so many Nepalese plants considered medicinal or culinary, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Perhaps Pooja would be willing to take me on a “research trip” to her home country, so I could put a name with a familiar/not-so-familiar (plant) face, but that would be wishful thinking on my part. I’ll just have to live with a permanently creased forehead and random episodes of (plant) déjà vu.
Author’s Note: I want to give special thanks to Pooja Pant for her inspiration and assistance with the details of this article. So much to learn, so little time!
