NR-021Ingredient Atlas entry · Root

Maca

Lepidium meyenii, also sold as Lepidium peruvianum, from the mustard family

A conquistador took it as tribute, a Jesuit said it burned the land and a roadside shopkeeper spread the word. For centuries maca was the bread of one cold plateau in Peru. The Inca warriors who supposedly ate it are harder to find.

  • Part used: root
  • Most tested: 2,000 mg a day
  • Usually 12 weeks
Version 1.4
Two whole maca roots on a pale surface

Nothing but maccas

Peru, May 1780. A royal botanist crosses a plain where almost nothing grows.1

Hipólito Ruiz led the King of Spain's botanical expedition. On 11 May he left Tarma at eight in the morning with his draftsman, Isidro Gálvez, bound for Reyes, ten leagues away across a wide pampa. Reyes was so cold all year that no trees, shrubs or grass grew near it. Its people raised barley inside stone walls so their animals would have something green in April and May.1

On all these pampas they planted no other crop than roots called maccas. The people were sure that a woman who ate them could make herself fruitful, and many who were childless came asking for them. Ruiz gave his own verdict. "The truth is that the maccas are stimulating, at least when eaten in quantities."1

He left at seven the next morning, bitterly cold after a night of frost, in a fog that came almost every day until the sun cleared it at eight or nine. Half a league on began Lake Chinchaycocha. The party struggled across the ruins of the Inca highway, "that great work of the pagans".1

Ruiz had crossed almost the whole of maca country. Most colonial records of the crop point to the shores of this one lake, today's Lake Junín, on a plateau some 4,000 metres up. People there had been eating the root for more than three thousand years.1, 2, 3, 4

Roots in a rock shelter

The oldest maca yet found came out of a rock shelter's rubbish heap. Panaulauca Cave lies 4,140 metres up in the Junín highlands, and people lived in it from 7700 BC to AD 1200. In 1979 an American archaeobotanist, Deborah Pearsall, began floating the plant remains out of its soil.4, 5

Maca roots first appear in layers from between 1900 and 1600 BC. At first they are thin, like the roots of a wild Lepidium that grows around the cave today. Then, layer after layer, they grow fatter and more plentiful, biggest between 1000 and 300 BC.4

Pearsall read it as people tending the plant into a crop, perhaps on ground churned up by the herds they were taming. No other dig has turned up maca, though dried roots keep well. Ancient Peruvian potters modelled crop after crop in clay, and never a maca.4

Bread, green and dry

Around 1629 the Carmelite friar Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa wrote up the province from his travels. It was so cold that not one tree grew there, and no corn or wheat. All the people had was a root shaped like a turnip or a little loaf, which they called macas. They assured him it was so fiery that it left the ground exhausted for thirty years.7

Yet the province had a large population, living in round houses like vaults. They burned llama dung and shut their doors tight until the smoke made each house "like a sweating chamber". It was "a dirty and wretched sort of life", the friar wrote, and yet the province was very rich.7

His manuscript lay in the Vatican, filed as anonymous, until a Smithsonian scholar came upon it around 1930.7

In 1653 a Jesuit, Bernabé Cobo, drew the fullest early portrait of the root. Maca grows "in the harshest and coldest part of the sierra", where no other food crop will, as if God had given it so that the people there would not go without. It was their bread, fresh and dried, all year round. The root was the size and shape of a small pear, white as a turnip inside, sweet and good.8

It had a strange property. One year's sowing "burns the land", Cobo wrote, so that it cannot be sown again for more than ten years. The friar had heard thirty.7, 8

Common opinion went further, Cobo wrote. Elsewhere in Peru the native peoples were dwindling. Here, in a province so barren and cold, they lived on maca and multiplied day by day, and the root had the power to do it.8

Cobo's book waited 237 years for a printer. It came out in Seville in 1890.8

The priest of Pisacoma

On 4 April 1831 a hailstorm caught Franz Meyen on the pampa of the Pisacoma river, in the far south of Peru. Meyen was a botanist sailing round the world on the Prussian ship Prinzess Louise. That evening, in bitter cold, his party reached the village and the house of its priest, Don Hermenejildo Viscando.9

The priest ruled his remote village like a prince. Ten or twelve dishes of solid silver came to his table at every meal, and he served perhaps the best chocolate Meyen drank in Peru. Yet he would give the exhausted horses and mules no green fodder, so the muleteer bribed a servant for some. Asked how many people lived there, the priest answered, "Two, sir! No more, the others are all Indians!" He meant himself and his nephew.9

On his day of rest Meyen gathered a rich haul of rare plants. Later he asked friends to describe whole families of them. One, the botanist G. Walpers, named a plant from "the plain around Pisacoma" after him. Lepidium meyenii was maca's first scientific name. Those pages were already printed when news came that Meyen had died in Berlin in 1840, aged thirty-six. They describe sprawling stems, toothed leaves and diamond-shaped pods. Of a root, not a word.9, 10

In 1857 Mariano Eduardo de Rivero, Peru's consul general in Belgium, called maca a kind of potato. Dried maca looked to him like pork cracklings, and by general opinion it greatly stimulated reproduction.11

The plant behind the name came from far south of the maca fields and had only a slightly thickened taproot. In 1990 a Peruvian botanist, Gloria Chacón, gave cultivated maca a name of its own, Lepidium peruvianum. A mustard-family expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden stayed with meyenii, while admitting, "I have been hunting to find the type of L. meyenii, but without much luck." Once maca became big business, the Peruvian name won followers anyway, mostly for reasons outside botany.12, 13

A hot drink on the Lima road

By 1980 maca was down to perhaps fifteen hectares, grown mostly to eat at home. In 1982 it was declared in danger of extinction as a crop.14, 15

Also in 1980, Timotea Cordova began selling a hot maca drink at her shop in Junín, on the road from Lima to Huánuco. Truck drivers and travellers loved it, and it was said to be good for sexual stamina and fertility. From her little shop word of maca spread across Peru, above all to Lima. Postcards on show there thanked Timotea for marriages restored and children longed for.14

In 1989 the US National Research Council put maca in a book called Lost Crops of the Incas. By 1994 Peru's farm census counted 556 hectares.15, 16

Then came the boom. A Peruvian drug company launched maca tablets in 1998. President Alberto Fujimori talked maca up in Japan, and the government financed 800 more hectares around Junín. In 2001 and 2002 the harvests swamped the market. Some 2,000 tonnes of dried maca sat in store around Junín, prices collapsed, and many farmers were ruined because they could not pay back their loans.17

In those same years the United States granted Pure World Botanicals patents on a maca root extract and its use for sexual dysfunction. Campaigners in Peru accused the patent holders of flagrant biopiracy, and by 2003 a Peruvian delegation had taken the case to the World Intellectual Property Organization.18

Warriors on the march

In 2014 the New York Times passed on "one historical account". In it the Inca emperor fed his troops maca for energy, then took it away after victorious campaigns to tame their sexual desire. An older telling says the ban was to protect the women.19, 20

None of the old writers in this story puts maca in a soldier's hands. The chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega lists the roots of Peru and leaves out maca altogether.1, 2, 7, 8, 11, 21

The oldest telling that could be read is in a 1997 handbook from a plant genetics institute in Rome. It calls the tale "the legend", straight after summing up a 1996 magazine article, "An ancestral Peruvian plant of astonishing powers", which had the Spanish letting their horses graze on maca to keep them breeding. A 2009 review traced Inca troops fed on maca to a 1981 book on nutrition in ancient Peru. That book could not be read, and there the trail goes cold.2, 20, 21

The livestock go back further. Lost Crops of the Incas said "surprised Spanish chroniclers" had seen maca make their livestock breed in the highlands. It named none, and none of these chroniclers says so.15, 21

One old writer did tie maca to the Incas. In 1615 the Andean chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala finished his illustrated history of Peru for King Philip III. The Incas and their people of old lived 150 or 200 years, he wrote, because they kept a rule. As boys they ate no fat, honey, chili or salt and drank no chicha. Each month they purged with bilca tauri and the same weight of maca, half swallowed and half given as an enema. They took no wife or husband until thirty, "and so they had very great strength".22

His Incas did not take maca to war. They purged with it, kept chaste and lived to two hundred.22

The gold rush of 2014

In June 2014, as the harvest began, Chinese buyers arrived in the town of Junín with suitcases full of cash. Within weeks the most sought-after maca went from about $1.80 a pound to more than $11. Thieves knocked a storehouse manager on the head and drove off with 2,600 pounds of the root. Truckloads went secretly to Bolivia, and seed went abroad despite a ban.19

At 14,800 feet, about 200 workers for Hugo Arias, the local "maca king", knelt in a cold wind, scraping the earth with short picks for $11.37 a day. Some of the women had babies on their backs. "They say I'm exploiting people," Arias said. "I don't exploit anyone. I give people work."19

"The poor person in Junín can't eat maca anymore," said Olga Rapri, who kept a clothing shop in town.19

The old trouble came back too. A maca field is planted for two years and then must rest for as long as fifteen, so farmers kept moving farther out, onto dizzyingly steep hillsides. Cobo said more than ten years. The friar had heard thirty. The root still burns the earth.7, 8, 19

Today maca is studied mostly for sexual function, menopause, semen quality and sport. What the trials found is in the Research tab.23

On the high plain where Ruiz found no crop but maccas, the pickers still kneel in the wind, some days almost too cold to pull the roots from the ground.1, 19

See what modern trials found

Myths and facts

In the record, or legend?

Every story you will read about this plant, checked against the oldest source we could find.

  • Inca warriors ate maca before battle and were banned from it after a conquest

    Legend

    No chronicle read here mentions it (Cobo, Vázquez de Espinosa, Ruiz, Rivero, Guaman Poma's maca passage; Garcilaso leaves maca out). The oldest telling we could read is a 1997 IPGRI handbook, next to its summary of a 1996 magazine article. A 2009 review traces Inca troops in Cusco supplied with maca, without the ban, to a 1981 book we could not read2, 19, 20, 21

  • The Spanish found maca kept their livestock breeding in the highlands

    Told, not shown

    A 1989 US report says "surprised Spanish chroniclers" noted it but names none. A 1996 magazine article made the horses part of the conquest story, and a 2009 review calls it that author's hypothesis2, 15, 20

  • Maca was paid to the Spanish as tribute

    In the record

    La Gasca's grant of 12 January 1549 to Juan Tello de Sotomayor lists 150 fanegas of maca in the Yaros' and Chaupihuarangas' tribute6

  • People of the Junín plateau long held that maca helped them have children

    In the record

    Cobo in 1653 (common opinion held that the province multiplied, "they say" by the root's virtue), Ruiz in 1780 (childless women asked for it) and Rivero in 1857 (of the high Andes generally)1, 8, 11

  • Maca has been farmed in the Andes for more than 2,000 years

    Likely

    Maca roots appear at Panaulauca Cave from about 1900 BC and grow bigger and more common until 1000-300 BC, which the archaeobotanist Deborah Pearsall reads as tending and domestication. It rests on one site4

  • Maca was once grown across the Inca empire, as far as Cusco and Lake Titicaca

    Told, not shown

    Repeated in handbooks ("presumably" Cusco and Lake Titicaca in 1997; "probably" from Ecuador to northern Argentina in 1989). Most colonial records point to Lake Junín, and Cobo's and Vázquez de Espinosa's maca passages place it only there. In passing, Vázquez also lists macas at Castrovirreina. Cobo's general chapter on the sierra counts macas among the bread roots of a cold zone that takes in "the great plains of the Collao" around Lake Titicaca, and says the next zone down, where Cusco lies, grows the same roots and more. Those are sweeping zone lists from 1653 that his own maca chapter contradicts, and no record read shows maca grown beyond Junín in Inca times. No other dig has found maca and no ancient pot shows it2, 4, 7, 8, 15, 20

  • Maca "burns" the soil it grows in

    In the record

    Vázquez de Espinosa heard thirty years and Cobo more than ten. Junín farmers in 2014 rested a maca field for up to fifteen years after two of growing7, 8, 19

  • Maca nearly died out as a crop

    In the record

    About fifteen hectares in 1980 by one estimate, and declared in danger of extinction as a domesticated plant in 198214, 15

In the record means a source from the time, or a scholar quoting one, says it. Likely means a named expert's reasoned identification. Told, not shown means one interested party says it and nothing checks it. Partly means a real event sits under a bigger story. Legend means the earliest source is far too late or missing. Wrong date means the event is real but the popular date doesn't match the record.

Notes

Every fact in the story points to one of these. Where a translation is ours, the note says so.

Show all 23 notes Hide the notes
  1. Hipólito Ruiz, Travels of Ruiz, Pavón, and Dombey in Peru and Chile (1777-1788), translated by B. E. Dahlgren from the Spanish edition of A. J. Barreiro (Madrid, 1931), Field Museum of Natural History, Botanical Series vol. 21 (Chicago, 1940), https://archive.org/details/travelsofruizpavfiruiz . Page numbers read off the page images. Preface, p. 5: the account "which Ruiz had prepared from his diaries and completed for publication in 1793 ... awaited publication for a hundred and forty years". Ch. 1, p. 9: King Carlos issued royal orders on 8 April 1777 for two botanists and two draftsmen to go to Peru; "He named me as first botanist and chief of the expedition, and as second Dn. José Pavón, and as first draftsman Dn. José Brunete, and Dn. Isidro Gálvez as second." P. 63: "On the 9th of May, 1780 we sent the muleteers from Tarma to Huánuco ... I delayed my trip with Dn. Isidro until the 11th, when at 8 o'clock in the morning we left Tarma and started for the pueblo of Reyes ... A half league from this hacienda one enters a beautiful and very extensive pampa or plain, with very little grass, that reaches to Reyes, 10 leagues distant from the pueblo of Tarma. The pueblo of Reyes is situated in the middle of the pampa of the same name, and has a cold climate the year around; for this reason trees, shrubs, and grass are not found in its vicinity, and they must plant barley in order to have alcazar [green barley] in the months of April and May to maintain their animals and to sell to travelers ... This little green barley is planted in fields enclosed with stone fences ... On the whole of these pampas of Reyes and Bombón they plant no other crop than roots called maccas, and even these not beyond the pueblos of Ordones, Carhuamayo, Ninacaca, and the annexes of these three parishes. The natives are convinced that by eating the root of the maccas, which are as big as hazelnuts and taste very good when they are boiled, women can make themselves fruitful; for this reason many who are childless request them. The truth is that the maccas are stimulating, at least when eaten in quantities. On the 12th we left Reyes at 7 o'clock in the morning. It was very cold due to the frost of the night and the dense fog that generally comes almost every day at 4 or 5 in the morning and lasts until 8 or 9, when the sun disperses it. Half a league from this pueblo is the beginning of the famous Lake Chinchaycocha ... we crossed the already mentioned highway of Reyes with great difficulty, as that great work of the pagans was already almost entirely destroyed". "The pagans" are the pre-Christian Andean builders; the road is the Inca highway (our reading, high confidence). The Spanish text was not seen; this is Dahlgren's English. "Almost the whole of maca country" is maca country as Ruiz drew it in 1780: the pampas of Reyes and Bombón, "not beyond the pueblos of Ordones, Carhuamayo, Ninacaca, and the annexes of these three parishes"; on the 12th "we passed Carhuamayo and Ninacaca". ↩
  2. M. Hermann and T. Bernet, The transition of maca from neglect to market prominence: lessons for improving use strategies and market chains of minor crops, Agricultural Biodiversity and Livelihoods Discussion Papers 1 (Rome: Bioversity International, 2009), ch. 5, pp. 25-27 (page numbers read off the page images), https://hdl.handle.net/10568/104787 (PDF: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/2d4729d8-5de4-4db4-a7c6-a6314de660a1/content ). P. 25: around 1550 Cieza de León describes roots grown at Lake Junín; "As quoted in Obregon (1998), the Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla contains a document, dated 1583, which describes the payment of an annual tribute of approximately 15-18 t of maca by the district of Chinchaycocha to the encomendador Juan Tello de Sotomayor, giving rise to speculation that the Spanish might have used maca to maintain fertility in their domestic animals (Obregon 1998). Sánchez (1996) hypothesizes that the Spaniards might have learned from the local population about maca's nutritious and fertility-enhancing properties, as they were concerned about the fertility of their horses". P. 26 lists the colonial accounts: Guaman Poma 1615, Vázquez de Espinosa 1630, Cobo 1653, an archdiocesan document of 1650 on rites in Junín, Ruiz 1777. P. 27: "A frequently quoted legend, according to which Inca troups in Cusco were supplied with maca (Antunez de Mayolo 1981), seems to support this notion"; "the above quoted literature clearly points to the areas surrounding Lake Junin (=Chinchaycocha) as the only area of maca cultivation in colonial Peru. We were unable to find a reference to a single historical source to suggest other locations"; "Inca Garcilaso de la Vega ... is silent on maca in his chapter XXV on edible roots, while he provides detailed descriptions of potato, sweetpotato, oca, añu and the elusive cuchucho root". The 1981 book (S. E. Antúnez de Mayolo, La nutrición en el antiguo Perú, Lima: Banco Central de Reserva del Perú) and Obregón 1998 were not available to us. Hermann and Bernet's 1981 version has Inca troops in Cusco supplied with maca and no ban after a conquest; they already called it "frequently quoted" in 2009. Their "only area" overlooks two passing mentions elsewhere in the cold highlands, Vázquez de Espinosa at Castrovirreina (note 7) and Cobo's general chapter on the sierra (note 8), so the story says "most colonial records". ↩
  3. G. F. Gonzales, "Ethnobiology and Ethnopharmacology of Lepidium meyenii (Maca), a Plant from the Peruvian Highlands", Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2012: 193496, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3184420/ (PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21977053/ ; PMC may show a bot check). Abstract: maca "grows exclusively in the central Andes between 4000 and 4500 m altitude". Section 2: "Maca has been cultivated in the Peruvian central Andes, in the former Chinchaycocha (Plateau of Bombón); present-day: Carhuamayo, Junin, and Óndores in the Junin Plateau". That Chinchaycocha is today's Lake Junín: Hermann and Bernet 2009, p. 27, "Lake Junin (=Chinchaycocha)" (note 2). ↩
  4. Hermann and Bernet 2009 (note 2), ch. 4, pp. 23-24: "The earliest evidence of maca as an edible food plant comes from Pearsall's stratigraphic analysis of archaeological plant remains recovered from the midden of Panaulauca Cave, a rock shelter occupied by humans from 7700 BC to 1200 AD and located at 4140 m altitude, near Atocsayco in the Department of Junin (Pearsall 1989). Maca roots first appear in excavated horizons dated between 1900 BC and 1600 BC, at a time when quinoa also becomes more abundant"; "Initially the size of the thin tuberous taproot of what Pearsall refers to as a contemporary wild Lepidium species found around Panaulauca, the excavated maca roots increase in size after 1600 BC reaching a maximum in the horizons corresponding to the period 1000-300 BC. By 1200 AD ... the average size of maca is similar to the lower range of modern maca cultivars"; "Pearsall (1989) concludes that the increase of size and abundance in the maca roots is suggestive of incipient maca cultivation (tending) and domestication. This appears to coincide with the domestication of camelids at the site. Indeed, Pearsall speculates that herding may have favoured maca domestication. Corralling animals and grazing may have provided the disturbed habitat that this herbaceous species requires"; "Apart from Panaulauca, we are unaware of other archaeological maca remains" (as of 2009); dried maca roots "preserve much better than similarly fleshy plant products"; "no phytomorphic ceramics representing maca have been documented in the ancient Peruvian pottery that is otherwise so rich in representations of cultivated plants (Leon 1964a, b)". Pearsall's own 1989 chapter was not available to us. A 1997 handbook (note 20, p. 182) says "Probably maca was domesticated in San Blas, Junín, between 1300 and 2000 years ago, but little is known about its origin (Matos 1978; Rea 1992)"; it reports no maca remains from a dig, and we could not read Matos. "More than three thousand years" counts from the first roots (1900-1600 BC) to Ruiz's visit in 1780. ↩
  5. Deborah M. Pearsall, curriculum vitae (University of Missouri, August 2019), p. 1 ("Citizenship: United States") and field experience: "Flotation and plant collecting, Panaulauca Cave project, summer 1979, 1981, January 1983", https://anthropology.missouri.edu/sites/default/files/people-files/pearsall.vita_.pdf . ↩
  6. T. Hampe Martínez, "Juan Tello de Sotomayor", Diccionario Biográfico Español (Real Academia de la Historia), https://historia-hispanica.rah.es/biografias/43144-juan-tello-de-sotomayor (the page loads its text by script; the same text is served at https://historia-hispanica.rah.es/api/biographies/43144 ). Translation ours. "Tello de Sotomayor, Juan. Salteras (Sevilla), c. 1519 - Huanuco (Perú), 1.III.1587"; "Fue uno de los jinetes designados por Francisco Pizarro para inspeccionar el sitio más aparente para la fundación de la capital ... y se halló por consiguiente entre los vecinos fundadores de la Ciudad de los Reyes o Lima (18 de enero de 1535). En virtud de su matrimonio inicial con Catalina Riquelme, hija del famoso tesorero Alonso Riquelme, le tocó recibir la encomienda de indios de Chinchaycocha, que comprendía la laguna de Junín y sus contornos. Todavía en la década de 1570, durante la visita general del virrey Francisco de Toledo, esta encomienda brindaba una renta de más de 6600 pesos al año"; "asistió junto a Almagro a la batalla de las Salinas (6 de abril de 1538)"; "Apostando a su mejor provecho, se pasó al bando defensor de la Corona cuando la rebelión de Gonzalo Pizarro hubo caído en desgracia" (betting on his best advantage, he went over to the side defending the Crown when Gonzalo Pizarro's rebellion had fallen into disgrace); "El 12 de enero de 1549 recibió del 'pacificador' Pedro de La Gasca una encomienda adicional, la de los indios Yaros y Chaupihuarangas, que le brindaban 700 pesos de oro, 150 fanegas de maca y 50 fanegas de papas entre los rubros de su tributo"; "recibió el grado de capitán"; "fue elegido alcalde de León de Huánuco en dos oportunidades: 1571 y 1577". A fanega is an old Spanish dry measure; its size varied by region, so we give no weight. Hermann and Bernet 2009, p. 25 (note 2), cite a 1583 document for about 15-18 tonnes of maca a year paid to Tello de Sotomayor; we did not see it. Puente Brunke's 1997 study of the 1549 tribute assessments was blocked by a bot check. That Las Salinas set Almagro's men against the Pizarros: H. López Martínez, "Diego de Montenegro Gutiérrez" (Diego de Almagro), Diccionario Biográfico Español (Real Academia de la Historia), https://historia-hispanica.rah.es/biografias/31057-diego-de-montenegro-gutierrez (text also at https://historia-hispanica.rah.es/api/biographies/31057 ): "Los pizarristas, con Hernando a la cabeza, llegaron a la pétrea ciudad imperial. Los almagristas, dirigidos por Rodrigo Orgóñez, pues el gobernador estaba muy enfermo, ocuparon emplazamientos en el campo de Las Salinas, cerca de Cuzco" (the Pizarro side, led by Hernando, Francisco Pizarro's brother: "la libertad de su hermano Hernando"). ↩
  7. Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, Compendium and Description of the West Indies, translated by Charles Upson Clark, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections vol. 102 (Washington, 1942), https://archive.org/details/smithsonianmisce1021942smit . Page numbers read off the page images. Introduction, pp. iii-iv: "In 1929 the Smithsonian Institution received from its Regent, Gen. Charles G. Dawes, a fund for research in European archives ... I was sent abroad on this quest in October"; he visited Rome before going to Spain; in the Barberini collection in the Vatican "came, as 'Anonymous,' Barb. Lat. 3584 ... The MS, beautifully bound in red morocco with the Barberini bees in the corners ... proved to be a detailed itinerary of Spanish America, written in 1628 or 1629"; Dr Ernst Schäfer identified the author as "the Carmelite missionary Fray Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa"; "In 1930, just three centuries after his death". The encyclopedia sketch Clark quotes says he died in Seville in 1630 and had returned to Spain from Peru and Mexico about 1622 (p. iv). §1367, p. 490: "The Province of Chinchaycocha is very cold, so much so that not a single tree grows in the whole of it, and no corn or wheat is raised; all they get is a root crop, shaped like a turnip or a loaf of bread (hogazuela), which the Indians call macas. This grows only in this province and it is so fiery that the Indians assured me that wherever it is planted, it leaves the ground exhausted for 30 years and of no use for raising crops. Although this province is so cold, it has a large population; the houses are all round like a vault ... They raise many llamas in this country and Spanish merino sheep; the Indians make use of their dung for their fires; they shut the doors tight and the smoke gathers up under the roof and it becomes like a sweating chamber. Although this is a dirty and wretched sort of life, this province is very rich". The Spanish edition (Washington, 1948, §1367) reads "dexa esterilizada la tierra por 30 años". Yet §1446, p. 530, on the mining city of Castrovirreina (Huancavelica), lists "potatoes, which are like ground truffles; ocas; macas, which are like small turnips; and ollucos" (Spanish 1948: "Ocas, Macas, que son como Nabos pequeños, Ollocos"), so his "only in this province" in §1367 is his own overstatement. ↩
  8. Bernabé Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, ed. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, vol. 1 (Seville: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Andaluces, 1890), book 4, ch. 15, "De la Maca", pp. 364-365, https://archive.org/details/historiadelnuev00cobogoog . Title page, chapter and page numbers read off the page images. Translation ours. "EN sola la provincia de Chincha-cocha, diócesis de Lima, se halla la raíz llamada Maca ... Nace esta planta en lo más áspero y frío de la Sierra, donde no se da otra planta alguna de las que se cultivan para sustento de los hombres; que parece proveyó Dios á los indios de aquella provincia desta raíz, para que no quedasen sin tener en su tierra algún mantenimiento natural della. Sírveles la Maca de pan, verde y seca, como la guardan, para todo el año. La planta es pequeña, que no se levanta del suelo más que un palmo ... la raíz es del tamaño y forma de una pera cermeña, blanca como nabo por de dentro, y después de seca queda mucho menor y muy parecida á las perillas secas; es dulce y de buen gusto ... Tiene una extraña propiedad, que do quiera que se siembra un año, abrasa la tierra de tal manera, que en más de diez años no se puede volver á sembrar en ella ... Su temperamento es muy caliente, y es común opinión, que, con ser la provincia de Chincha-cocha, donde se da esta raíz, muy estéril y de tan frío y áspero temple, por mantenerse sus naturales con esta raíz, no sólo no van á menos, como en las demás provincias del Perú, sino que se multiplican de cada día más, para lo cual dicen tener virtud esta raíz." "Abrasa la tierra" is literally "it burns the land". Preliminary note (pp. v-vi): the Society publishes "la parte hasta hoy conocida é inédita" (the part known so far, and unpublished) of the history, "escrita en el año 1653". Hermann and Bernet 2009, p. 26 (note 2): "the Jesuit Bernabé Cobo gives the most detailed account of maca". The maca chapter opens "EN sola la provincia de Chincha-cocha" (only in the province of Chinchaycocha), but Cobo's general chapter on the sierra, book 2, ch. 11, pp. 161-164 (page images), on p. 161 lists "papas, ocas, macas, hisañas, vllumas y la semilla llamada quínua" as the roots that "sirven de pan á los indios" (serve the Indians as bread) across the second, less barren zone of the sierra; p. 163 (page image) adds that this zone takes in "las grandes llanadas del Collao" (the great plains of the Collao, around Lake Titicaca); and p. 164 (page image) says the third zone, where "cae la ciudad del Cuzco" (lies the city of Cusco), grows "las raíces que en el segundo temple y otras muchas más" (the roots of the second zone and many more). On "more than ten years" Cobo speaks in his own voice; the multiplying of the province is "común opinión" (common opinion). ↩
  9. F. J. F. Meyen, Reise um die Erde ausgeführt auf dem königlich preussischen Seehandlungs-Schiffe Prinzess Louise ... in den Jahren 1830, 1831 und 1832, part 1 (Berlin, 1834), pp. 463-471, https://archive.org/details/reiseumdieerdeau1183meye . Title page and pp. 463, 467, 468 and 471 read off the page images. Translation ours. P. 463 opens the day's entry "Am 4ten April", and no new date comes before the arrival at Pisacoma on p. 467. Pp. 466-467: on the pampa of the Rio de Pisacoma "ein heftiges Unwetter mit Hagel" (a violent storm with hail) fell on them and the temperature dropped "dass es höchst empfindlich kalt wurde" (until it was bitterly cold); toward evening they reached the church village of Pisacoma and the house of the cura; it has 1,200 to 1,300 Indians; "Don Hermenejildo Viscando war unser Wirth ... er regierte in demselben gleich einem Fürsten" (ruled it like a prince); he lived "auf einer Höhe von etwa 14800 Fuss" (at a height of about 14,800 feet), an estimate: on p. 464 Meyen writes "niemals haben wir den Verlust unseres Höhen-Barometers mehr bedauert als eben hier" (we never regretted the loss of our altitude barometer more than here). The story gives no height for Pisacoma. P. 468: "bei jeder Mahlzeit 10 bis 12 Schüsseln, alle aus massivem Silber"; "das Brod von La Paz ... die Weine von Pisco und von Concepcion de Chile"; "In Peru haben wir vielleicht nirgends bessere Chocolate getrunken" (in Peru we perhaps drank no better chocolate anywhere). P. 467: "unsere Pferde und Maulthiere waren aber so sehr angegriffen" (our horses and mules were so worn out) that they stayed two nights. P. 468: the host was "so hart" (so hard) that he gave the animals, "aufs Äusserste entkräftet" (exhausted to the extreme), no green fodder, until "der Arriero ... in der letzten Nacht, einen der Diener des Cura zu bestechen" (the muleteer, on the last night, bribed one of the cura's servants); asked the number of people (hombres) in his village, "antwortete er: Dos Señor! No mas, otros todos son Indios! Zu diesen zwei Menschen rechnete er sich selbst und seinen anwesenden Neffen" (he counted himself and his nephew). P. 469 (rest day, 5 April): "Sehr reiche Ausbeute an schönen und seltenen Pflanzen ward uns hier zu Theil" (a very rich haul of beautiful and rare plants). P. 471: they left on 6 April. The ship anchored at Arica on 26 March (ch. 8, pp. 430-431), after a chapter dated February 1831 in Chile. Meyen does not mention maca. ↩
  10. G. Walpers, in F. J. F. Meyen, Observationes botanicas in itinere circum terram institutas (Beiträge zur Botanik), Nova Acta Physico-Medica Academiae Caesareae Leopoldino-Carolinae Naturae Curiosorum vol. 19, suppl. 1 (Breslau and Bonn, 1843), pp. 249-250, https://archive.org/details/novaactaphysicom1911843ac . Title page, pages and dates read off the page images. Title page: "Nach dessen Tode von den Mitgliedern der Akademie fortgeführt und bearbeitet" (continued and edited after his death by members of the Academy). Pp. 249-250: "Lepidium Meyenii Walp. caule prostrato ramoso, foliis omnibus sessilibus pinnatisectis vel grosse serrato-dentatis; siliquis rhombeis apice breviter emarginatis, stylo brevi, stigmate capitellato; tota planta glabrescente" (stem lying flat and branched, leaves all stalkless, pinnately cut or coarsely toothed, pods rhombic) ... "Peruvia: in planitie circa Pisacomam, alt. 15,000 pedum." No root is described. J. T. C. Ratzeburg, "Meyen's Lebenslauf", same volume, pp. xiii-xiv: Franz Julius Ferdinand Meyen died in the night of 1 to 2 September 1840, after visiting him in Berlin on the 1st; born 28 June 1804 at Tilsit. Preface, pp. x-xi: Meyen had meant to work up much of his collection himself, then "forderte er mehrere seiner Freunde zur Bearbeitung einzelner Pflanzenfamilien auf" (asked several of his friends to work up single plant families), printed as each was finished; Walpers's Cruciferae and the families after them end on p. 296, and "Mit dem Schlusse dieses letzten Theils, Seite 296, bezeichnet die akademische Presse den Tag, an welchem die Nachricht von Meyen's Tode zu uns gelangte" (the end of this last part, p. 296, marks the day the news of Meyen's death reached us). In the Reise itself (1834, pp. 469-470) Meyen named a few Pisacoma plants as new species. That this was maca's first scientific name: Hermann and Bernet 2009 (note 2), ch. 2, pp. 3-5, "In 1843, the species was first described and named as Lepidium meyenii by Walpers" (more in note 12). ↩
  11. Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustariz, Colección de memorias científicas, agrícolas é industriales, vol. 2 (Brussels: H. Goemaere, 1857), pp. 220-221, https://archive.org/details/colecciondememo01ustgoog . Title page and page number read off the page images; the title page names him "Consul General del Perú en Bélgica" and former director general of mining. Translation ours. "La Maca, variedad tambien de papa, tiene la figura de un higo, es sumamente dulce y se conserva por algunos años ... esponerla por un número de dias al sol y al frio ... De estas Macas que parecen chicharrones secos hacen una especie de caldo y de jarabe que despide un olor algo fastidioso para el que no está acostumbrado, y que, segun la opinion general, estimula mucho á la reproduccion". The passage is about "la Alta Cordillera de los Andes" in general, and what stimulates is the broth and syrup made from the dried roots. Maca is not a potato; it belongs to the mustard family. ↩
  12. Hermann and Bernet 2009 (note 2), ch. 2, pp. 3-5: "In 1843, the species was first described and named as Lepidium meyenii by Walpers, who based his description on the specimen of a wild plant collected in Puno, in Southern Peru, far away from the maca crop's endemic and insular distribution in the Central Peruvian highlands. This type specimen has only a slightly thickened tap root, and is clearly not derived from the cultivated form"; "In 1990, Chacon proposed Lepidium peruvianum as a new species and name for domesticated maca only (Chacon 1990)"; "after the explosion of commercial interest in the crop, especially after 2000, Chacon's proposal ... won over an increasing number of followers, mainly for reasons that lie outside of taxonomic and nomenclatural considerations", among them "public outrage over the granting of maca patents in the US" and a name "suggestive of Peruvian ownership"; the authors keep L. meyenii and are "fully confirmed by Brassicaceae expert taxonomist Al-Shehbaz, Missouri Botanical Garden" (p. 4); footnote 2, p. 5, quoting him (personal communication, 2002): "I have seen the isotype of L. peruvianum, and it is indistinguishable from the wild and cultivated plants that I have been calling L. meyenii since the mid 1980s. I have been hunting to find the type of L. meyenii, but without much luck." The Brassicaceae is the mustard family. ↩
  13. International Plant Names Index, author record "Chacón Roldán, Gloria (1940-)", country Peru, with the example "Lepidium peruvianum G.Chacón in Revista Peru. Biol. 3(2): 202. (1990)", https://www.ipni.org/a/32665-1 . Her papers are cited as Chacón de Popovici, G. (Hermann and Bernet 2009, references). ↩
  14. Hermann and Bernet 2009 (note 2), ch. 6, pp. 28-29 (page numbers read off the page images): "Vílchez (1999) estimates that in 1980 maca was grown only around Lake Junin and Yanacancha, a community close to Huancayo. Maca was cultivated mainly for self-consumption ... the area of land under maca cultivation at that time (1980) was around 15 hectares, an area so small as to raise concern that the the crop might become extinct (IBPGR 1982)"; "A key person in the promotion campaign is Timotea Cordova, the owner of a beverage shop in Junin, on the road between Lima and Huanuco. In 1980, she successfully begins to offer a maca beverage that is highly appreciated by her clients. Truck drivers and travellers enjoy the fortifying hot drink, said to be good also for sexual stamina and fertility. Over the following years, Timotea's store becomes 'the place' from where the news about maca spreads to other parts of the country, in particular to the nearby capital city of Lima. To this day, the little store serves the hot maca beverage to travellers, and numerous postcards on display - profusely thanking Timotea for restored marital lives and the arrival of desperately wanted children - are testimony to the almost magical powers ascribed to maca (Vilchez 1999)." ↩
  15. National Research Council, Lost Crops of the Incas: Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation (Washington: National Academy Press, 1989), "Maca", pp. 56-65, https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/1398/chapter/7 (read from the page images). P. 58: "soon after the Conquest, the Spanish found that their livestock were reproducing poorly in the highlands, and the Indians recommended maca. The results were so remarkable that they were noted by surprised Spanish chroniclers"; "Once it was probably grown from Ecuador to northern Argentina"; "Indeed, in 1982 maca was declared to be in danger of extinction as a domesticated plant" (footnote, as printed: "International Board for the Protection of Genetic Resources (IBPGR), 1982"; the body's real name was the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources). No chronicle is named. ↩
  16. G. F. Gonzales, "Maca: del alimento perdido de los incas al milagro de los Andes. Estudio de seguridad alimentaria y nutricional", Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional 17 (2010): 16-36 (the journal page spells it "milagros"), p. 18, https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/san/article/view/8634797 . Translation ours. "En 1994, el III Censo nacional agropecuario ... reveló que tan sólo 556 Has se dedicaba al cultivo de maca"; in 1989 the US National Research Council labelled maca "el alimento perdido de los Incas". ↩
  17. Hermann and Bernet 2009 (note 2), ch. 6, pp. 33-35: "In 1995, Química Suiza, a Peruvian pharmaceutical company became interested in maca ... Launched in the Peruvian market in 1998 ... tablets containing crude maca flour"; "a government campaign to finance the cultivation of an additional 800 hectares of maca in the Junin area. Peru's president at the time, Alberto Fujimori, made considerable publicity for maca in Japan from 1998 to 2000"; "The resulting drastic expansion of production in 2001 and 2002, however, resulted in oversupply of dehydrated maca ... Gomez (2002) estimated that, in 2002, 2000 t of dried maca were stored in the Junin area alone ... prices collapsed and many farmers were ruined as they were not able to pay back their loans." ↩
  18. Hermann and Bernet 2009 (note 2), section 7.4.2, "Maca patents", pp. 55-57: "In 2001 and 2002, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Pure World Botanicals Inc. patents protecting the 'extract of Lepidium meyenii roots for pharmaceutical applications' (US patent 6,267,995) and the 'treatment of sexual dysfunction with an extract of Lepidium meyenii roots' (US patent 6,428,824)"; "News of the patents unleashed a storm of protest in Peru amongst farmers' rights and biodiversity advocacy groups (e.g. press release by ETC Group, 3 July 2002), accusing the companies who had filed the patents of engaging in flagrant biopiracy"; "An INDECOPI-led delegation of Peru-based research institutions, private sector and advocacy groups eventually brought the issue of maca patents to the attention of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), who published the delegation's position paper in 2003." ↩
  19. William Neuman, "Vegetable spawns larceny and luxury in Peru", The New York Times, December 2014, as reprinted in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 December 2014, https://www.staradvertiser.com/2014/12/07/news/vegetable-spawns-larceny-and-luxury-in-peru/ (nytimes.com refuses automated requests, so the reprint is linked; it carries the byline "William Neuman, New York Times"). "Thieves recently broke into a storehouse in this farming town high in the Andes, knocked the manager over the head and made off with 2,600 pounds of contraband"; "this year Chinese buyers showed up here with suitcases full of cash to buy up the harvest"; "seeds were also smuggled out of the country illegally, despite a ban meant to prevent the root from being grown anywhere else"; "One historical account says that the Inca emperor fed maca to his troops to give them energy but removed it from their diet after victorious campaigns to tame their sexual desire"; "In June, as the harvest started, Chinese buyers arrived in this town of 10,000 people, which sits at 13,555 feet"; "Within weeks, the vegetable ... soared in value, from about $1.80 a pound to more than $11 a pound for the most sought-after variety"; the Japanese buyer's local representative "said the thieves hit him on the head, then loaded sacks of dried maca into a pickup truck"; "Many of the Chinese who bought maca this summer loaded the dried vegetables onto trucks and sent them clandestinely across the border to Bolivia"; "farmers typically plant a field for only two years, after which it must lay fallow for as long as 15 years. That has forced farmers to go farther and farther away to find land to plant, often tilling dizzyingly steep hillsides"; Hugo Arias, "considered by many here to be the maca king for his extensive plantings", farmed more than 600 acres; "Arias exhorted about 200 workers harvesting maca, in a field at a breath-sapping 14,800 feet, to work harder. A frigid wind blew mist across the pampa"; "'They say I'm exploiting people,' said Arias ... 'I don't exploit anyone. I give people work.'"; "They are paid $11.37 a day, they said"; "The harvesters, including some women with babies on their backs, knelt down to scrape the earth with short-handled picks"; Victor Parra "said it is so cold sometimes that he could barely pick the maca out of the soil"; "'The poor person in Junín can't eat maca anymore,' said Olga Rapri, 48, who has a clothing shop in town." The field scene and the pay ("they said") are from that 2014 visit. The story's "manager" is the article's opening; later it names the storehouse as a Japanese buyer's. The reprint's text renders some accented letters wrongly ("Junmn", "Csndor"). ↩
  20. C. F. Quirós and R. Aliaga Cárdenas, "Maca. Lepidium meyenii Walp.", in M. Hermann and J. Heller (eds), Andean roots and tubers: Ahipa, arracacha, maca and yacon, Promoting the conservation and use of underutilized and neglected crops 21 (Rome: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, 1997), pp. 173-197, p. 184 (read off the page image), https://hdl.handle.net/10568/104208 (PDF: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/23e4b35a-f2a8-4420-9c12-5023f2c369a3/content ). "Sanchez León (1996) presents an interesting account of the role of maca in the conquest of the Inca Empire. The Spaniards when arriving in a hostile environment, such as the puna of Junín, were afraid of losing their horses because of the lack of conventional pastures and their inability to reproduce at high altitudes. They soon learned about the nutritious and fertility-enhancing properties of maca, allowing their horses to pasture in fields of this crop ... During the times of the Tawantinsuyo, the legend says that before going to war the Incas used maca to feed the warriors to increase their energy and vitality. However, after conquering a city the soldiers were prohibited to consume it as a measure to protect women from their sexual impulses." P. 182 of the same chapter: "Apparently maca occupied wider areas of cultivation in the past (Johns 1981). In addition to Junín and Cerro de Pasco, presumably, it also was grown in Cusco and in the Lake Titicaca watershed." On p. 184 one sentence separates the summary of Sánchez León from the legend: "Owing to these beliefs, maca had a prominent place as a crop used to enhance the reproduction of pigs, chickens and horses." The legend may itself come from his article. The same page gives an older folk belief, "maca is an aphrodisiac which enhances sexual drive and female fertility in humans and domestic animals" (León 1964), which has nothing about the Spanish or about soldiers. The 1996 article is A. Sánchez León, "Una ancestral planta peruana de asombrosos poderes: Qué rica maca", Somos 495: 34-36 (reference list in Hermann and Bernet 2009); we could not read it. ↩
  21. Searches for the soldiers' story, 9 November 2026. Searched for maca near "soldado", "guerra", "guerrero", "caballo", "ganado" and their English forms: the downloaded volumes of Cobo (note 8, incl. the maca chapter and book 2, ch. 11), Clark's full English Vázquez de Espinosa (note 7, incl. §§1367 and 1446), Dahlgren's full Ruiz (note 1) and Rivero's vol. 2 (note 11); Guaman Poma only in his maca passage, pp. 117-120 (note 22), not the whole Nueva corónica. All but the Guaman Poma pages mention soldiers somewhere, but none puts maca in a soldier's hands or ties it to livestock; Vázquez's Chinchaycocha llamas and merino sheep appear only for their dung. The older folk belief that maca helps domestic animals breed is dated to León 1964 by the 1997 handbook (note 20). Web searches: "Inca warriors maca before battle women banned", "maca Inca soldiers forbidden after conquering city protect women legend", "maca guerreros incas prohibido después de conquistar mujeres leyenda". The oldest dated telling found is the 1997 handbook (note 20); later copies include the 2014 newspaper version (note 19). Garcilaso's silence rests on Hermann and Bernet's reading of his chapter XXV on edible roots (2009, p. 27, note 2); his text was not searched here. ↩
  22. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615), Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 4º, pp. 118-119, transcription at https://poma.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/118/es/text/ and https://poma.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/119/es/text/ . Translation ours. P. 118 ends: "De cómo estos Yngas y demás señores y prencipales y yndios particulares antigua gente hizo y acresentó su salud y uida, cómo duraron" ... p. 119: "dozientos y ciento y cinqüenta años. Duraron sus uidas porque tenían una horden y rregla de ueuir y criar sus hijos. Cuando muchacho no le dexaua comer cosa de sebo ni cosa de miel ni agí ni sal ni uinagre ni le dexauan ueuer chicha ni dormía con muger hasta tener cincuenta años ni se sangraua. Y se purgaua cada mes con tres pares de bilca tauri y otro tanto que pesase de maca y tomaua por la boca la mitad y la mitad se echaua melecina; con esto aumentó salud y uida. Hasta treynta años no tenía muger ni marido ni cargo y ací tenían muy mucha fuerza." "Melecina" is an old form of "medicina", and set against "por la boca" (by mouth) it means an enema here (our reading, high confidence). The text gives both fifty (no woman) and thirty (no wife or husband); the story uses thirty. P. 118 names "Uira Cocha rrey don Felipe terzero", King Philip III, for whom the work was written (its opening letters include one "al rey Felipe"). Hermann and Bernet 2009, p. 26 (note 2), cite the same passage as p. 119. ↩
  23. Nooroots Ingredient Atlas, maca, Research tab, /pages/maca-research , opening lines: "studied mostly for sexual function, menopause, semen quality and sport." ↩