Dermatophyllum


Dermatophyllum is a genus of three or four species of shrubs and small trees in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family, Fabaceae. The genus is native to southwestern North America from western Texas to New Mexico and Arizona in the United States, and south through Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo León in northern Mexico. Members of the genus are commonly known as mescalbean, mescal bean or frijolito. One of the common names of Dermatophyllum secundiflorum is Texas mountain laurel, although the name mountain laurel also refers to the very dissimilar and unrelated genus Kalmia and the name laurel refers generally to plants in the unrelated order Laurales.
Although still commonly treated in the genus Sophora, recent genetic evidence has shown that the mescalbeans are only distantly related to the other species of Sophora.

Species

Dermatophyllum comprises the following species:
Dermatophyllum spp. grow to tall, with a trunk up to in diameter, often growing in dense thickets that grow from basal shoots. The leaves are evergreen, leathery, long, pinnate with 5-11 oval leaflets, long and broad. The flowers, produced in spring, are fragrant, purple, typical pea-flower in shape, borne in erect or spreading racemes long. The fruit is a hard, woody seedpod long, containing 1-6 oval bright red seeds long and in diameter.
All parts of the mescalbeans are very poisonous, containing the alkaloid cytisine. Nevertheless, there is evidence of the seeds of the plant having been used in a ritualistic context as a hallucinogen by some Native American peoples. The symptoms of cytisine poisoning are very unpleasant. This has led to speculation that the peyote cult may have developed as a relatively safe substitute for the potentially toxic mescalbean, given the close parallels in performance and divination between the two.