OBITUARY: RICHARD SCHULTES

Richard Evans Schultes, jungle botanist, died on April 10th, aged
86.

In an account by Richard Schultes of his experiences among the Indians
of southern Mexico he described a mushroom, previously unknown outside
the region, used to create hallucinations. The account was mainly
academic in style; nevertheless it excited a writer who went to the
region and sampled the mushroom. His report was published in Life
magazine in 1957 under the title "Seeking the Magic Mushrooms". Thus
the "magic mushroom" came to the United States, to be promoted among
others by Timothy Leary, one of the high priests of American drug
culture of the 1960s, and still remembered for his recipe for supine
living, "Turn on, tune in, drop out".

Although Mr Schultes never expected his botanical discoveries to
affect, however indirectly, American social behaviour, he did not
criticise Leary and his weird followers for their use of drugs.

He merely expressed his disappointment that Leary had not spelt
correctly the Latin names of plants from which their drugs were derived.

But Mr Schultes was sad that the public attention given to their
hallucinogenic effects distracted from the value of plants as a source
of medicines.

After his adventure in Mexico he spent many years among tribespeople
along the Amazon river.

He collected thousands of previously unrecorded plants and reckoned
that some 2,000 had medical value.

Many more, he believed, were waiting in the jungle to benefit
humanity.

He liked to talk about curare.

For many years it had been known as a powerful, but short-term, poison
on darts and arrows used by Amazonian natives. Mr Schultes traced the
plants that curare came from. They yielded a substance now used as a
muscle relaxant in surgery.

He inevitably became concerned that the Amazonian jungle and its
inhabitants were disappearing alarmingly quickly.

Around 100 tribes have become extinct in Brazil alone in the past few
decades.

As the tribespeople disappear, so does their knowledge.

Mr Schultes saw it as his job "to salvage some of the native
medico-botanical lore" before it was lost. Perhaps, he said, the cure
for cancer "may come from the witch-doctor's knowledge of plants".

His orchid

Richard Schultes's parents were immigrants from Germany. His father
was a plumber in Boston. Young Richard won a scholarship to Harvard,
the first member of his family to go to university. In 1941 "as a
young botanist, armed with a bright, new doctor's degree", as Mr
Schultes described himself, he was sent by Harvard on a trip to the
Amazon to study medicinal, narcotic and poisonous plants.

On his first day in the jungle he found a previously unrecorded
orchid.

He sent it back to Harvard where it was called Pachyphllum schultesii,
the first of many plants attached to his name. He was due to return
after a few months but stayed in Amazonia for 14 years. During the
second world war he was told to remain in the jungle to look for
sources of natural rubber for the United States to replace Asian
plantations lost to the Japanese.

Mr Schultes sought to travel simply.

His kit is a reproach to overloaded backpackers. He carried a single
change of clothing, and little food: he ate the same as his native
hosts.

He did have a canoe, but it was light enough to carry unaided, and
anyway the natives were usually happy to lend a hand. Heavy boots, he
found, were usually unnecessary because jungle snakes generally struck
at the neck. A pith helmet, though, he found indispensable in the
rainforest. This made Mr Schultes resemble an explorer of the
Victorian era, which in some ways he was. One of his heroes was
Richard Spruce, a 19th-century British naturalist who also explored
the Amazon region.

Like the Victorians, Mr Schultes had an unquenchable curiosity that
went beyond his speciality. He wrote about the use of hallucinogens in
tribespeople's religious ceremonies. Shamans, medical men, under the
influence of hallucinogens believed that they acquired supernatural
powers enabling them to cure illness, locate lost articles, affect
fertility and control the weather.

Mr Schultes saw a connection with stories of European witches who used
potions that enabled them to fly. "Flying" was an experience claimed
by some of Leary's followers.

Mr Schultes's Christianity seems to have remained untouched, but he
accepted that to Indians throughout the Americas some plants are sacred.

One of his books is called "Where the Gods Reign".

Back from the Amazon with extraordinary tales to tell, Richard
Schultes remained at Harvard as a teacher until he retired in his 70s.
Students remember his prowess with a blowpipe that he kept in his
laboratory. Each year he returned to the Amazon to collect more plants.

He received numerous honours.

A chunk of Amazonia preserved by the Colombian government is called
Sector Schultes. He edited a journal called Economic Botany, covering
a science of which he was a pioneer.

Mr Schultes remained a modest man. A reporter, awed by his reputation
as the world's top authority on ethnobotany, asked how he should be
described. "Just a jungle botanist," said Richard Schultes.