Interesting facts

The name rhatany comes from the Peruvian Quechua language and means something like “plant that crawls over the ground” – an apt description of its growth pattern. The generic name Krameria is from the same source as the family name Krameriaceae. It was given to the plant by the Swedish botanist Pehr Löfling (1729-1756), a student of Carl von Linné (1707-1778), who named it in honour of Johann Georg Heinrich Kramer, a military physician in the Hungarian camp of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736). Kramer’s life work includes the book “Medicina castrensis”, published in 1735, in which he described “Bewährte Artzney wider die im Feld und Guarnisons unter Soldaten grassirende Kranckheiten” [Tried and trusted medicine for diseases prevailing among soldiers in the field and in the garrison]. The scientific epithet ‘triandra’ is composed of the Latin tri = three and Greek andros = man, and refers to the three male reproductive organs, the stamens, in the middle of the rhatany flower.
The Spanish physician and botanist Hipólito Ruiz López (1754-1815) and the Spanish botanist José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez (1754-1844) discovered rhatany during their explorations of the Peruvian highlands. While watching women cleaning their teeth with little sticks of rhatany root, Ruiz recognised its use as a medicinal plant. He identified the potent haemostatic properties of the root in practical experiments and once back in Spain he published this knowledge.
The root bark releases a red dye on boiling which can be used to colour cotton and linen. It also imparts a red hue to lips, and in Portugal was formerly used to give colour to port wine.