Mormon Tea

American Ephedra, known as Mormon tea, squaw tea, Brigham tea, or desert tea, is much milder than the Chinese variety and is used in many natural cold remedies. Ephedra's active ingedients are ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and norspeudoephedrine.

There are a number of species of the Ephedra genus growing in the southwestern deserts of the United States, including E. trifurca, E. viridis, E. torreyana, E. nevadensis and E. californica.

The broom-like stems of the herb are harvested by the ton in China and shipped to ports all over the world. They look like little more than bundles of stems, since the leaves are very tiny and scalelike at the nodes of the stems.

Ephedra plants are dioecious--they have male (18K) and female (19K) flowers on separate plants.

The plants help hold down the soil, acting as an anchor for sand dunes in the desert, and as a common growth on mountainsides.

Ephedra trifurcaor, also know as longleaf Ephedra, covers much of the rocky slopes of the U.T. El Paso campus. The green stems are edible and are browsed by deer and cattle.

This plant has an excellent view of the canyon! More Pictures: Dried male plant. (34K) Elderly plant but still alive! (34K) A close-up photo with centimeter reference scale. (42K)

Sources: Various web pages, I took the images out of my cache after a good round of browsing. Mail me and I will remove or cite any copywrited material.