Crescentia alata Kunth, commonly known as the Calabash tree, is native to Southern Mexico and Central America, where it is used as food, medicine, and to produce decorative objects.
The seeds and pulp are added to raicilla and chocolate and honey or sugar and drunk as a festive drink. The fruit and bark are used for cough and whooping cough (pertussis). The fruit is steeped in a mixture of raicilla chocolate, honey and cinnamon and is considered medicinal to take in the morning for bronchitis. For example, a lot of the men who cut and harvest Parota experience sinusitis because of dust exposure. They would make this drink. The tree is also used as a “confessional” -one tells one’s sins to the tree, ostensibly because the leaves are shaped like a cross.
Notably, Crescentia alata has been used traditionally in the treatment of respiratory infection. An application that has been supported by clinical research, where extracts of its fruits have proven to be highly antimicrobial against many harmful bacteria (Rojas et al. 2001). Extracts of the leaves of C. alata have also been studied to evaluate their anti-inflammatory activity (Autore et al. 2001). The results of these inquiries have shown that the leaves of C. alata do exhibit great potential for use in the prevention of inflammation and that they may also play a role in immunoregulation (ibid.).
Autore, G., Rastrelli, L., Lauro, M. R., Marzocco, S., Sorrentino, R., Sorrentino, U., Pinto, A., & Aquino, R. (2001). Inhibition of nitric oxide synthase expression by a methanolic extract of Crescentia alata and its derived flavonols. Life Sciences, 70(5), 523–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0024-3205(01)01425-4
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Morton, J.F. The calabash (Crescentia cujete) in folk medicine. Econ Bot 22, 273–280 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02861961
Rojas, G., Lévaro, J., Tortoriello, J., & Navarro, V. (2001). Antimicrobial evaluation of certain plants used in Mexican traditional medicine for the treatment of respiratory diseases. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 74(1), 97–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-8741(00)00349-4
Watson, G. (1938). Nahuatl Words in American English. American Speech, 13(2), 108. https://doi.org/10.2307/451954
Zizumbo-Villarreal, D., González-Zozaya, F., Olay-Barrientos, A., Almendros-López, L., Flores-Pérez, P., & Colunga-GarcíaMarín, P. (2009). Distillation in Western Mesoamerica before European Contact. Economic Botany, 63(4), 413–426. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-009-9103-6