Erythroxylum: The Coca Plant
The coca plant is a member of the order Geraniales and the family Erythroxylaceae. There are four genera with an estimated 200 species in Erythroxylaceae (De Witt, 1967). Coca was first described as Erythroxylum by A.L. Jussieu in 1783. It was given the binomial Erythroxylum coca by Lamarck in 1786.
Early botanists believed that all coca plants were of the same species. Later researchers found that two species of domesticated coca existed. These are Erythroxylum coca Lam. and Erythroxylum novogranatense (Morris) Hieron (Rury and Plowman, 1983). The two species have two varieties, Erythroxylum coca Lam. var. coca, E. coca var. Ipuda Plowman, E. novogranatense (Morris) Hieron var. novogranatense, and E. novogranatense var. truxillense (Rusby) Plowman (Plowman, 1983).
Distribution
Coca is grown in South America, Africa, Ceylon, Taiwan, Indonesia and Formosa (De Witt, 1967). Coca is most commonly associated with its center of origin, the South American Montana zone of the eastern Andes below 2000m (Bray & Dollery, 198:3).
According to Rury and Plowman (1983) E. coca var. Coca, Huanuco or Bolivian coca is the ancestral variety. Bolivian coca grows in the moist tropical forests of the eastern Andes of Peru and Bolivia. This variety is the only one of the four found growing wild. Bolivian coca is the major source of commercially produced coca leaves and cocaine.
Amazon coca, E. coca var. ipuda is cultivated in the lowland Amazon. It has been suggested that this variety is a lowland cultigen of Bolivian coca. In contrast to Bolivian coca it is not found growing wild (Rury and Plowman, 1993).
E. novogranatense var. truxillense or Trujillo coca is a hardy, drought resistant variety. It is found growing in river valleys of coastal Peru and other arid areas of this region. Bohm, Ganders & Plowman (1982) state that this variety displays many characteristics that are intermediate between E. coca var. coca and E. novogranatense var. novogranatense, and may represent an evolutionary stage between these species.
E. novogranatense var. novogranatense or Colombian coca is cultivated in both moist and dry areas in the Colombian mountains. It is also drought tolerant and is not found growing outside Cultivation. Evidence shows that this variety maybe the most evolved species (Rury & Plowman, 1983).
Cultivation
Coca plants are small evergreen shrubs with reddish brown bark. They have many small branchlets with elliptical-obovate opposite leaves measuring 4-7 cm. in length and 3-4 cm.
Rahman, S. A. (2010, April 2). India: Coke plant leaves farms dry. In OneWorld South Asia. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://southasia.oneworld.net/news/india-coke-plant-leaves-farms-dry#.U1hYh-8U8c-
As Wikipedia has become more and more popular with students, some professors have become increasingly concerned about the online, reader-produced encyclopedia. While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it.
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Gootenberg, Paul. Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
the world's leading coca producer. Twenty years ago almost no coca was grown in Colombia. Only
Velasquez-Donaldson, C. (2007). Coca Production and Alternative Development in Bolivia: A Study Case. Graduate Student Journal, 2007, 58–70. doi:10.1016/j.jvoice.2010.09.010
At the beginning of the industrial revolution in England during the mid-nineteenth century, the railroad was the most innovative mode of transportation known. The British Rail system was a forerunner in railroad technology, uses, and underground engineering. Though the rail system was extremely slow at first and prohibitively expensive to build and run, the British were not to be dissuaded in their pursuit of non-animal driven transportation. The most advanced mode of transportation prior to the introduction of the rail system was the horse drawn omnibus on a track, called a tram. This paper will examine the rail system from a cultural perspective, presenting the impact the railway had on everyday lives in Victorian London and its surrounding communities.
Pure cocaine is the product of the Erythroxylon coca bush, which is mostly found in South America (NIDA, 2014). In South America the consumption of the coca leaf have been recorded as far back as 3000 B.C. (Warner EA, 1993). The coca leafs only contain about two percent of cocaine and in this form there is few instances of abuse. The rate at which it is absorbed is slow in the digestive system and very little cocaine reaches the bloodstream. When the Spaniards came to the Inca civilization in 1532 the drug allowed the locals to endure a harsh and physically demanding life in the Andes. It was seen as a gift from the god Inti (Inciardi, 2002, pg. 49). Even today those natives of the region chew the coca leaves.
Molitior Nancy “The 411 on Clinical Psychologists: Here’s the Truth” Your mind your body. 20 Nov 2009. Web. 14 Feb 2014
This story has been told to me many times by an acquaintance. The person I’ve known grew up in the projects of Selma, Alabama. It 's a really rough place you wouldn 't want to grow up in. They didn 't have nice things because they were poor. They lived in a house filled with cockroaches so it wasn 't very clean. It was very hard for him to keep occupied because he didn 't have much to do except to play basketball. During his Senior year, he had gotten into the wrong group of people and tried his first hit of Cocaine. He then, later, became an addict. In the telling of many stories about this drug, he said to me, “No one, when they are little, wants to become a drug dealer or snort their first line of Cocaine, but
Clinical psychology aims to reduce psychological distress and to enhance and promote psychological well-being by the systematic application of knowledge derived from psychological theory and data’ (British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology, 2001). To this end clinical psychology has distinguished itself from other helping professions by an enduring reliance on its foundation of scientific research.
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, that is brilliantly translated by Harvey C. Mansfield, focuses on advising a prince to base his power mainly through the people since there seems too many of them rather than very few nobles or the great. Machiavelli elaborates on civil principality where a prince is elected with the support of the citizens of the state or the nobles of the state. Whether the prince is elected by the nobles or the people, he will have to maintain himself with great responsibility. When a prince is elected by the nobles, he will have to, “maintain himself with more difficulty than one who becomes prince with the aid of the people”(Machiavelli 39), according to Machiavelli, this is because the number of nobles is very few compared to the number of people. The difference between the people and the nobles states that at times of difficulty the prince will have more support from the many, also known as the people, rather than the few, who are known as the nobles.
2. Cocaine is derived from the leaves of the cocoa plant and is then further processed to produce the common street drug.
The field of clinical psychology integrates the science of psychology with the treatment and assessment of complex psychological human problems, making it an exciting career choice. Further, the study of the mind will likely never “ end” such domain will always hold value.