Kava

Kava or Piper Methysticum is a pacific island plant in the same genus as the common pepper plant in the family Piperaceae. It is know as Awa, Ava Yaqona and sakau on other islands with many variations depending on whet island it originated from. The root of this plant has been and is still to this day consumed by many pacific islanders from New Guinea all the way to Hawaii and down into french Polynesia. Its primary use is as a sedative and a anxiolytic with many other tradional medicinal remedies. The primary active ingredients are in the root and are a series of kavalactones witch is concentrated in the roots but found also in lower amounts in the leaves and stems. The roots can be used fresh by maceration and cold water infusion or more popularly dried and stored for better shelf life and used in cold or warm water extractions. There is on going debate whether or not kava and its kavalactones have a hepatoxicity mainly to the liver due to unwanted chemicals from the leaves or extracted from the roots due to solvent based extracts.

Morphology

Piper Methysticum is a member of the pepper family, Piperaceae, which belongs to the order Piperales in the class Dicotyledonae. Ten of these in the Piperaceae species are products of human consumption used as spices or medicinal drugs. these include:

• P. nigrum (Pepper), one of the oldest known spices,
• P. betle
• P. cubeba (java pepper or tailed pepper), a plant native to indonesia wich was formerly used as a medicine and now as a spice.

It is a hardy, slow growing Perennial reaching heights of more then 3 meters. It is harvested for its rootstock or stump with Monopedial stems with sympodial branches growing from the stump. The stump is knotty, Think, and sometimes tuberous. From this rootstock extends laterally up to 3 meteres long. Rootstock color varies between white to dark yellowdepending upon the amount of kavalactones that are contained in the lemon yellow resin.

Cultivation

Although kava does produce flowers it is incapable of reproducing sexually; its propagation is vegetatively and is dependent solely on human effort. Farmers take cuttings from existing stems off harvested plants and planted i the ground somewhat sideways. New growth occurs at the stem bud at the axil of a lateral branch scar. An upright shoot develops, and then axillary buds and lateral axes appear. In the same way the root stock develops. Choose a site away from prevailing winds air currents can damage kava stems and rootstock, making them susceptible to disease. Shade must be provided during the first 30 months of growth. Along with adequate shade and protection from the wind, kava requires fairly high average temperatures (20-35c) and high humidity (70-100%). Kave grows best in deep, friable, well-draining soils that are rich in organic matter. The plant is very nutrient demanding. Highest yields are obtained on silica-clay soils with a pH OF 5.5-6.5 good drainage is essential.

Preparation and consumption

In the Pacific kava is typically drunk at dusk, usually before the evening meal.Infused kava is never kept for long; Islanders prepare kava for immediate consumption. After drinking, people eat small amounts of food because kava tends to reduce appetite and over eating can cause nausea. Several traditional methods of kava preparation all serve to extract the active chemical constitutes of fresh or dried rootstock. Processing basically involves chewing, grating, grinding or pounding kava stumps and roots and then infusing the processes mass into cold water. These methods break up and macerate the rootstock so that the kavalactones after more readily released in the cold water. Today mastication of fresh rootstock is only practiced in southern vanauatu and among some tribes in papua new guinea. In Fiji men serving as village priests prepared kava every morning in men's houseshouses, or houses of ancestor worship, as an offering tho village ancestors. The priests and other men in the village would then drink kava together. The rootstock was prepared by grinding, not mastication, and the drink was infused in lead lines holes in the ground, in shallow wooden bowls that were sometimes human or animal in shape, of in plain clay vessels. Early fijians folders their kava by pouring it through bunches of backen fern leaves in a wooden canister like device, rather then using a stronger of hibiscus tiliaceus bark as is common in Polynesia. Fijians also did not drink our of coconut shells as they do today, but instead right out of the container. In traditional samoan preperation, a young girl chased and served kava. The girl was preferably a virgin, who purified herself for kava preparation by washing her hands and wrists. After chewing kava, she mixed and infused the macerated root in a kava bowl and filtered out the residue with a hibiscus bark strainer. Samoan ceremony required the girl to sit cross legged and bare breasted on a mat behind the kava bowl, with flowers carefully arranged in her hair and wearing a grass skirt. This presented an image of beauty that added to the aesthetic dimension of kava preparation. It the banks island of northern Vanuatu, Kava drinkers traditionally split into 2groups, And a person from each group prepare kava for the other. As on most of the northern Vanuatu islands, preparation in the banks group involved the grinding of fresh kava over a large wooden dish using an elongated coral abrading stone. The inner surfaces of these wooden dishes eventually became covered with a grayish-green deposit that is also found at the bottom of coconut shells used as drinking bowls. This deposit is a resinous kavalactone residue that contains the plants active ingredients in concentrated form. Some drinkers periodically scrape the resin from there dishes and mix this with fresh water tho obtain a brew with very powerful effects.