Issue:
117
Page: 44-57
James A. Duke — A Diverse Life of Botanical Bounty
by Steven Foster
HerbalGram.
2018; American Botanical Council
Alabama-Born
James
Alan Duke, PhD, was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on April 4, 1929, delivered at
home by an African-American midwife. He was raised in the red clay hills
outside of Birmingham, where one could find a Duke living on nearly every hill.
“I come from the cotton-pickin’ Dukes, rather than tobacco Dukes,”* he recalled
with his always-present humor, accented by a soft-spoken cadence reflecting his
Alabama roots. In his first six years, he spent time between his grandmother’s
home on Second Avenue in south Birmingham and a farm along the Coosa (Koosa)
River about 40 miles outside the city with his parents and two brothers. His
father was a cotton farmer, who later dabbled in the nursery and horticulture
business.
Duke
recalled that his family was “plain ol’ poor” and they would eat what they
could find or grow most of the time, usually homegrown and canned food shared
by the extended Duke family in rural Alabama. In a February 1999 issue of People
magazine, he mused that his family was “so poor we were The Grapes of Wrath
and didn’t know it.”1
A
favorite early culinary memory of Duke’s was of scuppernong grapes, a native
southern variety of the muscadine grape (Vitis
rotundifolia, Vitaceae), which originates along the Scuppernong River of
North Carolina. “It’s a redneck grape like I’m a redneck person,” Duke laughed.
“They grew behind my grandmother’s house and from late August until frost you
could eat them off the vine.” His grandmother often made scuppernong marmalade
and jelly, but his favorite treat was the “treasure” his grandmother called
“scuppernong juice.”2
Across the street from his grandmother’s Birmingham home
lived Mr. Brooks, a lonely old man who kept rabbits. Duke, then five years old,
believed that Mr. Brooks and the rabbits were his best friends. Old Mr. Brooks
had a great love for nature and would take Duke to the hills along East Lake in
Birmingham, where he learned about watercress (Nasturtium officinale,
Brassicaceae) and chestnuts (Castanea spp., Fagaceae). By the time Duke
started grade school, he had developed a love for biology and the music he
heard in the Alabama countryside.
North Carolina Upbringing
Duke lived in Alabama until he was eight, and the Great
Depression years forced the family to move to Durham, North Carolina, with Duke
and his two brothers in the “rumble seat of a very broken-down car.”3
His family lived in Durham for a year or two and then moved to Raleigh. His
father became an insurance salesman, and the family prospered. His dad started
playing golf, and the family ate meat and potatoes instead of the high-fiber,
mostly vegetable-based diet that they had survived on in Alabama.
Years
later, Duke recalled: “This is a story that’s important to me. Both my father
and his two brothers who died of cancer graduated from the rural high-fiber
diet to the meat-and-potato diet of the newly affluent, and I really think that
their cancers of the colon were due to this change in diet. I think that they
would have lived many more years had they not achieved this level of affluence.
I can’t prove it. But I am what is called a high-fiber nut trying to avoid the
same chain of circumstances.”3
In
a letter, dated April 15, 1993, to then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, he
repeated his position. “You asked for advice on your health reform program,”
Duke wrote. “Let me recommend one Jeffersonian health tidbit. If you must use
meat, use it as a spice, not as a main entry. That could save thousands of
lives and millions, if not billions of dollars.”4
In
Raleigh, Duke joined the Boy Scouts and became keenly interested in the
outdoors and natural sciences, especially botany and biology.3 Some
of his teachers and mentors encouraged his obvious interest in the subject,
including his mother, who got him a job watering plants at a greenhouse and enlisted
his help in her flower garden. During the same time period, he had a magazine
delivery route, and would sometimes trade magazines with musicians in exchange
for a performance. His interest in southern folk music and plants grew in
tandem.
From
the age of 12 on, Duke spent long hours outside, taking hikes that were
sometimes 10 miles or more. At age 15, a Mr. Jim Kessler got him a job as a
“junior ranger” (really a glorified maintenance man, as Duke described it) at
what was then known as Crabtree Creek State Park and is now known as William B.
Umstead State Park, a 5,088-acre park in the Raleigh-Durham area. The park was
established in 1943 as one of the many Recreational Demonstration Area parks
created by the National Park Service through the Works Progress Administration
and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The
year 1944 was a formative one. By then, he had his own guitar, and, for three
months, he lived in a one-room cabin with no water, electricity, or toilet in
the middle of a broomstraw field at the park. It was here that he penned one of
his first songs, inspired by observing the daughter of one of his bosses, whom
he saw swinging on a porch with her blonde hair flowing with the swing’s
motion. That inspired the first verse of his “Chamomile” song, recorded on his
1986 vinyl LP HerbAlbum: “Golden hair up in a bun, smiling shyly in the
sun.” He never met the young lady.5
Briars
to Bands — From Bassist to Botanist
Duke
married his first wife, a fellow musician, at a relatively young age. After
reading Gene Stratton-Porter’s The Harvester (Grosset and Dunlap), a
1911 novel featuring an herb wildcrafter, Duke dreamed of a Thoreau-like
existence in the North Carolina mountains harvesting ginseng (Panax spp.,
Araliaceae). That fantasy meshed with his love of music, and Duke played bass
fiddle with his wife’s band (a trio featuring two sisters and their mother) on
the then-country music station WBT radio in Raleigh that featured live country
music and bluegrass programming. As a teenager he also played bass as a back-up
musician with the trio at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.
While
a student at E. Morrison High School in Raleigh, he played with another band. That
gig took him to the WBT radio studio every morning at 6 a.m. to play bass
fiddle for a 15-minute live music segment with Homer A. Briarhopper and His
Dixie Dudes. In 1947, the young Jim Duke also went to Nashville with the group
to record a 78-rpm record featuring the instrumental piece “The Briarhopper
Boogie,” in which Jim Duke played a bass solo.3 Homer Drye’s
Briarhoppers and His Dixie Dudes with teenage bassist Jim Duke were mentioned
in Billboard Magazine the same year.6 The band, which formed
in 1934, continues to perform as the WBT Briarhoppers, now in its ninth decade;
the longest-lived bluegrass band of all time.7
After
high school, Duke enrolled at North Carolina State University in a wildlife
conservation program, but he soon dropped out. A year of working odd jobs, such
as a carpenter’s helper, sharpened his desire to return to school.8
His
musical interests would lead to him to his career as a botanist. In the late
1940s, student musicians from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel
Hill heard Duke playing bass and invited him to play with a big band jazz group
at the university. In 1948, he enrolled in UNC as a music major and became the
second bass player in the 20-piece jazz band. Since he didn’t read music well,
even though he had been practicing for five years, the first bassist played the
notated music, while Duke was given the role of
playing improvisational bass solos in the band for almost a decade.8
Down
the Botanical Garden Path
Duke’s
path to becoming a classical bassist went astray in his first semester at UNC.
He took botany courses with H.R. Totten, PhD (1892-1974), and later with C.
Ritchie Bell, PhD (1921-2013), and fell in love with field botany.8
The experience compelled him to switch from a music major to a botany major
with a focus on taxonomy and a minor in zoology. He earned his undergraduate
degree at UNC in 1952. He continued on with a master’s degree program in botany
at UNC, where he met fellow botany student, Peggy-Ann Wetmore Kessler. They
fell in love and married. Peggy K. Duke, a talented botanical illustrator,
provided artwork for many of his publications.
Jim
Duke attained his master’s degree on December 7, 1955. The next day, on
December 8, he was drafted into the US Army. He was sent to Fort Jackson in
Columbia, South Carolina, for basic training, and then was stationed at Fort
Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, located a few hours from the Mexican border.
He recalled that on one of his three-day pass weekends he ventured across the
Mexican border and got his first glimpse of Latin America, and fell in love
with it. For the rest of his life, Duke would return to Latin America whenever
he could.
The
Army moved Duke to Fort Benning in Georgia and assigned him to the infantry.8
Duke, of course, would have preferred to have been around plants, and he
drafted a letter for his father to send to his Army officers explaining that he
had a botany degree, and couldn’t they put that to use? Not long after, he was
transferred to Fort Detrick in Maryland, where he trained other soldiers about
edible, useful, and poisonous plants and mushrooms.
After
completing his two-and-a-half years of military service, he used the GI Bill to
enroll in a doctoral program in plant taxonomy at UNC, and became the first
graduate student of noted North Carolina botanist Albert E. Radford, PhD
(1918-2006).8 Radford, director of the UNC Herbarium from 1946-1983,
co-authored the classic Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas
with Harry E. Ahles and C. Ritchie Bell, published in 1968 by the University of
North Carolina Press. Nearly every weekend during his PhD program, Jim and
Peggy Duke were assigned to take Radford, Ahles, or Bell into the field to
collect specimens for the Manual. The Dukes are honored in the
“Acknowledgments” section of the book for their contributions, including their
field collections.9 The book was the first and only mid-20th-century
technical flora guide for the South, is still a reliable reference, and remains
in print today.
Duke
enrolled in a PhD program in botany at UNC in 1959 and finished his PhD work in
1961, after which C. Ritchie Bell took
him on the first of many botanical-collecting trips to Latin America.10
The three-month excursion split time among Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica,
where they collected with Rafael Lucas Rodríguez Caballero (1915-1981), the
iconic Costa Rican biologist, botanist, and artist known for his wildlife
paintings, and for whom a wildlife sanctuary is named (Refugio de Vida
Silvestre Dr. Rafael Lucas Rodríguez Caballero, Costa Rica).
Distinguished
Ecologist and Student of the Flora of Panama
After
Duke completed all the botany courses and degrees offered at UNC in 1961, his
professors suggested that he pursue postgraduate work with Robert E. Woodson,
PhD (1904-1963), curator of the Herbarium at the Missouri Botanical Garden in
St. Louis, Missouri. Woodson was working on a longterm publication project on
the flora of Panama, and Duke put his taxonomic skills to work, writing
treatments on Panamanian plant families. These include Amaranthaceae (amaranth
family), Berberidaceae (barberry family), Caryophyllaceae (pink family),
Ceratophyllaceae (hornwort family), Chenopodiaceae (goosefoot family),
Monimiaceae (lemonwood family), Myristicaceae (nutmeg family), Nymphaeaceae
(waterlily family), Polygonaceae (buckwheat family), and Ranunculaceae
(buttercup family).
Duke’s
two years as a taxonomist and assistant curator at the Missouri Botanical
Garden focused on identifying plant specimens collected in Panama and elsewhere
in Latin America, including Peru.10 During this period, Woodson
served as a consultant for Ciba Pharmaceuticals, and they were collecting
plants from Peru. Duke had the challenging job of trying to assign names to the
Peruvian plant specimens. Although this was his first experience working
specifically with medicinal plants, it was limited to the herbarium. It would
also mark the end of his professional work as a taxonomist.†
In
honor of Duke’s taxonomic work on the Panamanian flora in the early 1960s,
several species were named for him, including Grias dukei (now a synonym
of G. cauliflora, Lecythidaceae),11 Koanophyllon
dukei (Asteraceae),12 Psychotria dukei (now a synonym of Notopleura
dukei, Rubiaceae),13 and Rondeletia dukei (now a synonym
of Wittmackanthus stanleyanus, Rubiaceae).14 In 1966,
John Duncan Dwyer, PhD (1915-2005), named a new genus in the Rubiaceae (madder)
family Dukea, which included six species: Dukea chariantha, D.
panamensis, D. victoriae, D. blumii, D. darienensis,
and D. euryphylla, four of which were new to science. Dwyer named them
“in honor of Dr. James Duke, distinguished ecologist and student of the flora
of Panama.”15 Unfortunately, at least for those who would like to
see Duke’s name live on in botanical taxonomy, these species have since been
relegated to synonymy in the genus Raritebe.
Puerto
Rican Plants
In
1963, Duke was approached by the Crops Research Division, a part of the US
Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Agricultural Research Service, for an
assignment in Puerto Rico that piqued his interest. He took the assignment and
traveled to Puerto Rico to study tropical tree seedlings. Specifically, the job
involved experimental work and documenting how herbicides affected the
succession of tropical vegetation. He became proficient at identifying tropical
woody plants in the seedling stage.
One
publication from this period proved useful in helping to identify tropical tree
seedlings in Puerto Rico following the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in
September 2017. The comprehensive paper, “Keys for the identification of
seedlings of some prominent woody species in eight forest types in Puerto
Rico,” also included 182 technical illustrations of seedlings by Peggy Duke.16
The research was contracted by the USDA and sponsored by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense. Peggy Duke’s
illustrations were prepared and subsidized by the Rain Forest Project of the
Puerto Rico Nuclear Center in El Verde, Puerto Rico, and supported by the
Division of Biology and Medicine of the US Atomic Energy Commission.10
Panamanian
Ethnobotanical Passion
After
two years of successful research in Puerto Rico, Duke was offered a position as
a research ecologist with the Columbus Laboratories of the Battelle Memorial
Institute in Columbus, Ohio.10 His assignment was to conduct
bioenvironmental and radiological safety feasibility studies in remote regions
of Panama. President John F. Kennedy had initiated a feasibility study to
assess the practicality of widening the Panama Canal, or perhaps excavating a
new canal, to accommodate supertankers. The project was called the
Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission. The United States had a
tool that would easily accomplish the excavation work: nuclear devices. The
idea was to detonate nuclear devices on the Central American isthmus to create
a new canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Sponsored by the Atomic Energy
Commission, Battelle was tasked with determining what radionuclides might get
into the food chain if a new sea-level Panama Canal were to be excavated with
nuclear devices.
“The
dietary studies in Panama and Colombia were designed to quantify per-capita
food consumption so that it could be determined what quantity of radionuclides
would be ingested by natives following nuclear excavations of a sea-level
canal, assuming that natives are allowed to return after a selected period of time,”
Duke explained.17
Duke’s
research took on an ethnobotanical and ethno-zoological focus.10 For
nearly three years, his job was to document what the local and indigenous
people ate, drank, and used as medicine from the environment. He took his young
family, including Peggy, their two-and-a-half-year-old son John, and
six-month-old daughter Celia, with him to Panama.
“It
was extremely interesting, learning how closely these people were tied to the
environment,” Duke recalled.10 He traveled by dugout canoe, and much
of his work was conducted in the Darién province of Panama, a wilderness region
that is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the world. (The Darién Gap is an
approximately 60-mile stretch of wilderness that forms the only break in the
19,000-mile Pan-American Highway.) On one field trip in 1968, Duke and his
colleague Joseph H. Kirkbride, Jr., PhD (now with the Smithsonian Institution’s
Department of Botany) hiked across Panama from Bocas del Toro province on the
Atlantic side to Chiriquí province on the Pacific side. On another field trip,
they hiked from Darién province to the Colombian border.
In
Panama, Duke became immersed in what became his overriding professional
interest: neotropical ethnobotany. During a collective four years of field work
(between 1963 and 1970) in Panama and Colombia, he collected more than 15,000
specimens of plants, as well as amphibians, arthropods, birds, fish, mammals,
and reptiles that were part of the food chain, especially of the Chocó (now
Embera-Wounaan) and Cuna (now Guna) tribes.18,19
Pondering
“Progress” in Panama
Following
his field collections, Duke spent several years in Columbus, Ohio, producing
reports of his findings. His close connections with the people and environment
in Panama added perspective to the debate over the plans for the controversial
sea-level canal. In a letter to the editor of Biological Conservation he
asked: “Where does Panama intend to deposit its solid wastes, treated or
untreated? ... Where does Panama intend to put its thermal [nuclear] effluents?
... Any one of them if added in sufficient quantity at the centre of a
sea-level canal, would be repugnant, if not lethal, to interoceanic migrants,
including tourists. However, the sea-level canal was not proposed to accommodate
tourists, but instead large ocean-going tankers.”20
In
another letter to the editor of Science he asked: “Does generosity of
avarice dictate that the developed nations hinder the development of
underdeveloped nations with environmental considerations? ... Progress is a
magic word in Panama…. It is not politic to hinder progress; politicians
usually decry pollution only when their constituents are crying pollution. Such
is true in few, if any developing countries. Progress, sí;
pollution control,
mañana.”21 Duke’s service was always to the people whose
traditions he admired rather than the government entities or projects that
employed him.
Duke
recognized the cultural and environmental problems that often occurred when
developing countries clashed with developed countries. In 1970, still at
Battelle Memorial Institute, he responded to a series of 10 articles alerting
the scientific community that the Vietnam defoliation program (using Agent
Orange) was having serious side effects in Vietnam. Based on their experiences
as tropical ecologists, Duke and his colleague John T. McGinnis sent a letter
to the editor of Science recommending and outlining a practical 10-point
research program on tropical reforestation that could “contribute to a
successful rehabilitation of Vietnam to correct some of the side effects of the
war.” As an accomplished musician, poet, and songwriter, subtle humor would
often creep into his scientific writings. The letter was titled “Vietnam
Refoliation.”22
With
the completion of the voluminous feasibility studies on the proposed
Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal, the five-member Canal Study Commission
concluded, “Unfortunately, neither the technical feasibility nor the
international acceptability of such an application of nuclear excavation
technology has been established at this date.”23 And, surprising
Duke, they also concluded that “The risk of adverse ecological consequences
stemming from construction and operation of a sea-level Isthmian canal appears
to be acceptable.”
From
Drug Plants to Databases
Reading
those conclusions, Duke raised an eyebrow, rubbed his chin, and returned to the
Agricultural Research Service at the USDA in 1971 as chief of the Plant
Taxonomy Laboratory, part of the Plant Genetics and Germplasm Institute. After the
reorganization of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in 1972, Duke’s new
assignment with the USDA, in conjunction with the United Nations, was to come
up with alternative crops for narcotic plants. Viewing marijuana (Cannabis
spp., Cannabaceae), coca (Erythroxylum spp., Erythroxylaceae), and
poppies (Papaver spp., Papaveraceae) as economic plants, despite their
legal status, he began compiling massive amounts of data on economic plants of
the world. The data would not only serve as the foundation for his assigned
program at the time, but would also become the foundational database for other
programs that Duke directed. The list of projects including work on alternative
agricultural crops, oilseed crops, alternative energy-related crops, and underutilized
food crops. One of the most significant outcomes was the largest compilation of
data on medicinal plants ever amassed by an individual.
By
1981, the computerized list of medicinal plants produced by Duke and colleagues
at the Economic Botany Laboratory (formerly known as the Medicinal Plant
Resources Laboratory) would include more than 85,000 entries.24 This
would become the heart of his groundbreaking “Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical
Databases,” which he updated from the 1970s until his retirement in 1995. The
database is now permanently archived, and it is still available through the
National Agricultural Library and remains one of the most frequently accessed
USDA databases.25‡
Recognizing
that a weed in one part of the world may be a food or fodder crop elsewhere, or
that a medicinal plant in one country may be an illegal narcotic in another,
Duke and his team generated a list of 1,000 lesser-known crop species and
developed a matrix that included information about their “ecological amplitude”
from one region to another. The data matrix included taxonomic, ecological,
morphological, geographical, pathological, ethnobotanical, biochemical, and
economic data that grew out of the crop diversification program. His “Crop
Diversification Matrix” was published in 1974,26 along with a paper
on the ecological amplitudes of herbs, spices, and medicinal plants.27
The
comparative data were collected from correspondents at agricultural stations
and botanical gardens from around the world who provided information about
economic plants that were successfully grown in their regions (without
irrigation). Duke and his team complied annual precipitation data from each
region, along with temperature, pH, and soil data. Later publications would
also include data about nutritional values.28,29
The
work also served the public interest. The Plant Genetics and Germplasm Institute
held the largest taxonomic collection of seeds in the world, which served
local, national, and international identification of seeds, and in several
instances prevented deaths and solved the cause of fatalities. Duke’s lab also became a primary source for identifying
fragmentary narcotic and poisonous plant material.30
Poppy Pursuits
Poppyseed rolls too
hot or hardened
The seed will not
grow in the garden;
But if the seeds
are to germinate,
Narcotic laws are
violated;
Poppy patches are
not to be pardoned!
—From Herbalbum: An Anthology of Varicose Verse31
In the early 1970s, Duke turned his professional
attention to poppies. This work took him to various parts of the world,
including Iran to collect opium poppy (P. somniferum) germplasm from the
plant’s center of genetic diversity, as well as to document opium production
practices. In 1971, he observed poppy production among Meo ethnic minority
villages in Thailand and a Yao village in Vang Vieng, Laos.32
Looking beyond the obvious abuse potential of opium poppy
as a narcotic, Duke turned his attention to the plant group’s broad economic
potential. He wrote about poppy’s potential as an ornamental and a source for
poppy seed, poppy seed oil, high-protein poppy-cake, poppy flour, and poppy as
a vegetable. He saw the potential for poppies to be used as a commercial ant
feed, antimalarial, cough remedy, and salad vegetable, among other purposes.
He documented the adulteration of marijuana with opium,
morphine, or codeine and speculated that this adulteration could have
contributed to the perception of marijuana as a gateway to opiate abuse. He
observed that where both marijuana and opiates were illegal, they were often
sold in the same illicit channels, associating one with the other. He became an
early advocate for the legalization of marijuana, believing this was the best
way to control its economics and availability. He observed that tribal
herbalists in India had both marijuana and opium in their medicine kits. How,
he asked, can one eliminate opium and marijuana in populations where 80% of the
people are attended by Ayurvedic or Unani-Tibb practitioners?33 His
detailed observations and information on the genus Papaver could be
revisited for leads on to how to deal with the modern opioid crisis. Clues
might be found in the Annotated Bibliography on Opium and Oriental Poppies
and Related Species, a 1973 book with Duke as lead author.34
Chief,
USDA Medicinal Plant Resources Laboratory
In
1977, the USDA appointed Duke as chief of the Medicinal Plant Resources
Laboratory, which was then renamed the Economic Botany Laboratory, apparently
because of the controversies then emerging about herbal products in the early
years of the natural food industry. From 1977 to 1981, Duke headed the USDA’s
collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to collect plant
specimens and promising biomass from all over the world that might have
anticancer activities. This effort was inspired by the work of NCI scientist
Jonathan L. Hartwell, PhD (1906-1991). Hartwell’s pioneering work on the common
mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum, Berberidaceae) resulted in the isolation
of podophyllotoxin and several other compounds, which eventually led to the
development of semisynthetic drugs used in chemotherapy for the treatment of
testicular cancer and small cell lung cancer. In July 1960, a contract was
established with NCI for the USDA to begin collections of plant materials for
screening potential new anticancer compounds. Duke considered this his most
important assignment during his service at the USDA, which took him to China,
Egypt, South America, and elsewhere.
Between
1960 and 1980, the NCI screened approximately 35,000 species of higher
(flowering) plants for activities against cancer. By 1977, approximately 3,000
of those had demonstrated reproducible activities. A small fraction of these,
including mayapple, yew (Taxus spp., Taxaceae) derivatives, and others,
were eventually chosen for clinical trials. Jonathan L. Hartwell’s Plants
Used Against Cancer, a compilation of 11 papers originally published in Lloydia
(now the Journal of Natural Products) from 1967 to 1971 on folk
cancer remedies worldwide, covered more than 3,000 species and includes more
than 1,000 references.35
In
1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the NCI Natural Products
Screening Program was removed from the federal budget. “I got a phone call,”
Duke recalled, “that the 25-year-old program, that wow, came to an abrupt and
painful end.”36 At the time, Duke was in the process of bringing
back 900 pounds of plant material from China, and his colleague, Richard W.
Spjut, was bringing in more than a half-ton of plant material from Australia.
In
Duke’s foreword to the reprint of Hartwell’s Plants Used Against Cancer,
he lamented: “I view the publication as one epitaph to the cancer-screening
program involving the National Cancer Institute with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture for nearly 25 years. In a blow to natural-products chemistry in the
United States, the Board of Scientific Counselors, Division of Cancer
Treatment, National Cancer Institute, voted on October 2, 1981, to abolish the
NCI research program concerned with the development of antitumor agents from
plants. I fear this signals the end of significant government-sponsored
research in the United States on medicinal plants, leaving research to the
pharmaceutical firms, who have shown relative disinterest in plant products.”37
After his appointment as chief of the USDA’s Medicinal
Plant Resources Laboratory in 1977, Duke garnered international notoriety for
his work in economic botany and medicinal plants, as well as attention from the
popular press. He was profiled in People magazine’s April 4, 1977 issue,
and became a fixture on the lecture circuit, speaking on medicinal plants and
herbs at professional and public venues. He emerged as the public face of the
federal government for all things herbal and carefully upheld a conservative
approach to herb use as a government scientist. Jim Duke had to walk an
uncomfortable tightrope between his personal beliefs advocating the use of
herbs and at the same time emphasizing that he deferred “the prescribing of
medicines” to medical professions, be they physicians or shamans.
Academic and Popular Author
Duke kept one foot in academia and the other in popular
interpretation of the use of herbs. He produced roughly an equal number of
technical books and popular books on herbal topics. He was quick to publish in
newsletters and magazines such as Well-Being, Bu$iness of Herbs, Colt’s
Foot, Prevention, Mother Earth News, and, of course, in HerbalGram.
Duke also published books and booklets, some of which
were directly related to his USDA career. In 1972, he self-published a
dictionary of colloquial slang terms in various Latin American language
variations and dialects, and this was intended for diplomats and scientists
working in the region.38 Based on his earlier field work in Panama,
he also published the Isthmian Ethnobotanical Dictionary in 1972,39
a booklet that was later revised and published as a hardcover title by a
publisher in India.40
With the end of USDA’s contract with the NCI, a
disappointed Duke became chief of the Germplasm Resources Laboratory at USDA,
but he also pursued more of his own writings and activities.
In a 1988 interview, he mused: “Feeling sorry for me,
USDA let me take the momentum I had gotten in medicinal plants to go off duty
and publish what has been a best-seller for CRC Press (in CRC terms), The
Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, and that one came out in 1985.36
“The
USDA has no medicinal plant program since that moment in 1981 when the cancer
program was terminated,” he recalled in the same interview.36 “And I
have a feeling this is appropriate. The USDA is into food, fiber, and fodder,
and even our country is not much into medicinal plants. Why should an agency of
our country be into medicinal plants? … I’m not saying this is my philosophy. I
believe in medicinal plants, but the USDA really should not have much
involvement in medicinal plants. So, I sort of hung myself there, didn’t I?” He
laughed.
Duke
looked ahead to “retirement” so he could get to work. In a letter to this
author dated June 12, 1986, he predicted: “I may have to retire to the ginseng
patch at 57. That’ll give me 10 good but lean years of trying to turn the U.S.
away from the synthetics to the natural. Quite an unholy and unlikely crusade.”41
Retirement was not to come as quickly as he thought. Duke persisted at the USDA
for another nine years before retiring at age 66.
Although
his books started with massive USDA data-collection projects, he was allowed to
continue to work with his USDA files to shape them into reference books. From
1981 until his retirement in 1995, the USDA permitted him to continue his
medicinal plant research “off duty.”36
The
majority of Duke’s book-publishing activity occurred after the USDA’s
collection activities for the NCI ceased in 1981. His first professional title,
Handbook of Legumes of World Economic Importance (Plenum Press, 1981),
was based on data he collected about alternative crops and was a detailed
survey of 140 species of legumes.42 In 1983, the first of
three editions from three separate publishers of Medicinal Plants of the
Bible was issued.43-45 In 1985, he co-authored (with Edward S.
Ayensu) a two-volume work titled Medicinal Plants of China (Reference
Publications), which featured an introductory chapter that compared North
American and Chinese medicinal plants.46
Duke’s
herbal publishing leaped from academia to literary humor with the self-published,
staple-bound, rare Herbalbum: An Anthology of Varicose Verse (1985),
which included more than 500 herbal poems — doggerels and limericks — along
with a collection of bluegrass songs and their simplified notated melodies and
chords. In 1986, the songs were cut into a LP vinyl record with studio
bluegrass musicians, recorded in Nashville, and titled Dr. James A. Duke
Presents The HerbAlbum.
In
quick succession, he completed small press popular books, including a book on
growing and using culinary herbs47; the Handbook of Northeastern
Indian Medicinal Plants (Quarterman Publications, 1986)48; Living
Liqueurs (Quarterman Publications, 1987), a practical approach to having
your herb and drinking it too, with the aid of cheap vodka49; and Ginseng:
A Concise Handbook (Reference Publications, 1989).50 In
1990, he coauthored Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of
Eastern and Central America (with this author, S. Foster) in Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt’s Peterson Field Guide series, with a second edition in 2000
and a third edition in 2014.
Academic Publishing Success
The success of his 1985 CRC Handbook of Medicinal Herbs,
which included 365 herbs, or an herb a day, a constant Duke mantra, led to the
publication of at least a dozen more CRC titles, including academically obscure
tabular compilations such as the CRC Handbook of Proximate Analysis Tables
of Higher Plants with A.A. Atchley (1986) and the four-volume CRC
Handbook of Agricultural Energy Potential of Developing Countries with A.A.
Atchley, K. Ackerson, and P. Duke. Technically rich but readable books for
knowledgeable enthusiasts include the CRC Handbook of Nuts (1989), CRC
Handbook of Edible Weeds (1992), CRC Handbook of Alternative Cash
Crops with J.L. duCellier (1993), and Duke’s Handbook of Medicinal
Plants of Latin America with M.J. Bogenschutz-Godwin and A.R. Ottesen
(2009). His CRC titles became an academic publishing franchise.
Birth of a Bestseller
In a letter dated June 26, 1995, Duke wrote to this
author: “For better or worse, for me, for herbal industry, for Rodale, for
USDA, I have signed a contract with Rodale to do, in one year, yet another book
on herbal medicine. There are already too many. And I am not as optimistic
about this one as they are. And the one year deadline forces me to retire on
Sep. 30 [1995] to devote near full time to Rodale (except for an ecotour here
and there, like joining you in the Amazon in October for example).”51
A year later, he was finishing the final draft of his book
The Green Pharmacy, published by Rodale in 1997. It was to become a
runaway bestseller with more than a million copies sold, and then spun-off into
additional Rodale book titles including Dr. Duke’s Essential Herbs
(1999), The Green Pharmacy: Anti-Aging Prescriptions with Michael
Castleman (2001), and The Green Pharmacy: Guide to Healing Foods (2008),
among others. The Green Pharmacy was one of the best-selling herbal
title franchises of all time.
The Dukes purchased a six-acre farmette in Fulton,
Maryland, in 1971, about 16 miles from the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service
campus in Beltsville, Maryland. The Dukes christened the farm “Herbal
Vineyard.” It was here that Duke “retired” and created a four-acre herb garden
with hundreds of plant species, in plots arranged by medical conditions,
following the chapters in The Green Pharmacy. Thousands of people have
visited and been inspired by the rural Maryland garden, and countless
individuals were introduced to the botanical diversity of the tropics through
Jim’s leading more than 60 tours to the Amazon, Costa Rica, and elsewhere
during his productive retirement years. Many of these tours happened via the American
Botanical Council’s “Pharmacy from the Rainforest” ethnobotany ecotours, which
were continuing education approved for pharmacists and other health
professionals.
Remember This
Jane P. Gates, of the Alternative Farming Systems
Information Center at the USDA National Agricultural Library, asked Duke in a
1988 interview, “What would you like to be remembered for?”52
Standing barefoot in his garden with his signature plaid shorts, Duke replied:
Something I haven’t done yet. I would like to be remembered for turning
around the trend to the natural medicine from the synthetic medicine. I think
we made a mistake there, because through evolution, my genes and immune system
have already experienced all of the poisons that are here in this garden, or
many of them, because my grandparent’s grandparents ate or used these things
for one thing or another, such that my genes have already touched those
poisons, my genes have not experienced tomorrow’s synthetics. Two hundred years
ago, all of our medicines were natural. Today, still, 25% of prescription drugs
are based on higher plants and almost half of our prescription drugs are based
on lower plants, higher plants, and animals, so even today 50%, or almost 50%,
are natural. So, I would like to see that [we] go back to 100% natural. I
really believe that natural is safer than the synthetics.
Steven Foster is an author, photographer, and
herbalist, and he serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Botanical
Council. His most recent book is the third edition of the Peterson Field
Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America (Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), which he co-authored with James A. Duke, PhD.
* James B. Duke, 1856-1925, best known as the father of the modern
cigarette, created “The Duke Endowment,” a trust that would result in renaming
Trinity College to Duke University. James A. Duke is not related to James B.
Duke.
† Jim Duke’s family treatments on
the flora of Panama are published as 10 separate papers in various issues,
volumes 47-49 (1961-1963), in the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
‡ Until several months before his
passing, Duke continued his activities as an avid compiler of voluminous
medicinal plant information into the successor databases, known as "Father
Nature’s Farmacy."
References
- Miller
S, Morehouse M. Jungle Jim: To botanist Jim Duke herbal healing is no fad—it’s
the best medicine. People. February 1, 1999:113-117.
- Gates
JP. Part 1. Introduction and early life. Oral history interview with Dr. James
A. Duke. Beltsville, MD: US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural
Library, Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Videocassette No. 629,
1988. Available at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/james-duke.
- Gates
JP. Part 2. Early botanical interests and early memories. Oral history
interview with Dr. James A. Duke. Beltsville, MD: U.S. Department of
Agriculture, National Agricultural Library, Alternative Farming Systems
Information Center, Videocassette No. 629, 1988. Available at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/james-duke.
- Duke
JA. Letter to Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, April 5, 1993.
- Gates
JP. Part 3. Early botanical interests and early memories. Oral history
interview with Dr. James A. Duke. Beltsville, MD: US Department of Agriculture,
National Agricultural Library, Alternative Farming Systems Information Center,
Videocassette No. 629, 1988. Available at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/james-duke.
- Anon.
Billboard. August 23, 1947:118.
- Warlick
T, Warlick L. The WBT Briarhoppers: Eight Decades of a Bluegrass Band
Made for Radio. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Company, Inc.; 2007.
- Gates
JP. Part 4. College, military service and post graduate work. Oral history
interview with Dr. James A. Duke. Beltsville, MD: US Department of Agriculture,
National Agricultural Library, Alternative Farming Systems Information Center,
Videocassette No. 629, 1988. Available at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/james-duke.
- Radford
RE, Ahles HE, Bell CR. Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press; 1968.
- Gates JP. Part 5. Work in
the botany of Latin America. Oral history interview with Dr. James A. Duke.
Beltsville, MD: US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library,
Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Videocassette No. 629, 1988.
Available at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/james-duke.
- Dwyer JD. Notes on the
Lecythidaceae of Panama. Ann Mo Bot Gard. 1965;52(3):351:363.
- King RM, Robinson H.
Studies in the Eupatorieae (Asteraceae) CXX. Additions to the Genus Koanophyllon
in Panama. Phytologia. 1974;28(1):67-72.
- Dwyer JD. Rubiaceae.
In: Woodson RE, Schery RW. Flora of Panama, Part IX. Ann Mo Bot Gard.
1980;67:371.
- Dwyer JD, Hayden SMV.
Notes on woody Rubiaceae of tropical America. Ann Mo Bot Gard.
1967;54:138-146.
- Dwyer JD. Dukea. A new
genus of the Rubiaceae (Tribe Mussaendeae). Ann Mo Bot Gard.
1966;53(3):360-367.
- Duke JA. Keys for the
identification of seedlings of some prominent woody species in eight forest
types in Puerto Rico. Ann Mo Bot Gard. 1965;52(3):324-350.
- Duke JA. Darienita’s
Dietary. Bioenvironmental and radiological-safety feasibility studies,
Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal, 112 pp., 1970. Abstract 202 in
Environmental Plutonium Data Base Group, Environmental Sciences Division, eds. Environmental
Aspects of Plutonium and Other Elements. A Selected, Annotated Bibliography. Oak
Ridge, TN: US Atomic Energy Commission. ORNL-EIS-73-21 (Suppl. 1):200 August,
1973.]
- Duke JA. Ethnobotanical
observations on the Choco Indians. Econ Bot. 1970;24(3):344-366.
- Duke JA. Ethnobotanical
observation on the Cuna Indians. Econ Bot. 1975;29(3):278-293.
- Duke JA. The sea-level
canal accord? Biological Conservation. 1971;4(1):17.
- Duke JA. Aquatic
ecosystems. Science. 1972;176:582.
- Duke JD, McGinnis, JT.
Vietnam refoliation. Science. 1970;107:807.
- Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic
Canal Study Commission, eds. Interoceanic Canal Studies. Washington, DC.
1970.
- Duke JA, Wain KK.
Medicinal plants of the world. Computer index with more than 85,000 entries.
1981 (unpublished).
- Dr. Duke’s
Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases. National Agricultural Library, US
Department of Agriculture website. Available at: https://phytochem.nal.usda.gov/phytochem/search. Accessed January 24,
2018.
- Duke JA, Terrell EE.
Crop Diversification Matrix: Introduction. Taxon. 1974;23(5/6):759-799.
- Duke JA, Hurst SJ.
Ecological amplitudes of herbs, spices and medicinal plants. Lloydia.
1975;38(5):404-410.
- Duke JA. Vegetarian
vitachart. Quart J Crude Drug Res. 1977;15:45-66.
- Duke JA. Nutritional
values for crop diversification matrix. Ecol. Food and Nutrition.
1977;6:39-48.
- Duke JA, Moseman JG.
Papaveraceous Polyclave. Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 1974;3(1):1-95.
- Duke JA. Herbalbum:
An Anthology of Varicose Verse. JA Duke: Fulton, MD; 1985.
- Duke JA. Notes on Meo
and Yao poppy cultivation. Phytologia. 1974;28(1):5-8.
- Duke JA. Utilization of
Papaver. Econ Bot. 1973;27(4):390-400.
- Duke JA, Gunn CR,
Leppik EE, Reed CF, Solt ML, Terrell EE. Annotated Bibliography on Opium and
Oriental Poppies and Related Species. Beltsville, MD: Agricultural Research
Service, US Department of Agriculture. ARS-NE 28; December, 1973.
- Hartwell JA. Plants
Used Against Cancer: A Survey. Lincoln, MA: Quarterman Publications, Inc.;
1982.
- Gates JP. Part 6.
Medicinal plants and publications. Oral history interview with Dr. James A.
Duke. Beltsville, MD: US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural
Library, Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Videocassette No. 629,
1988. Available at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/james-duke
- Duke JA. Foreword. In:
Hartwell J. Plants Used Against Cancer: A Survey. Lincoln, MA:
Quarterman Publications, Inc.; 1982:v-vii.
- Duke JA. Lewd Latin
Lexicon. Fulton, MD: JA Duke; 1972.
- Duke JA. Isthmian
Ethnobotanical Dictionary. Fulton, MD: JA Duke; 1972.
- Duke JA. Isthmian
Ethnobotanical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Johdpur, India: Scientific Publishers;
1986.
- Duke JA. Letter to
Steven Foster. June 12, 1986.
- Duke JA. Handbook of
Legumes of World Economic Importance. New York, NY: Plenum Press; 1981.
- Duke JA. Medicinal
Plants of the Bible. New York, NY: Conch Publications; 1983.
- Duke JA. Herbs of
the Bible: 2000 Years of Plant Medicine. Loveland, CO: Interweaver
Press; 1999.
- Duke JA, Duke PAK,
duCellier, JL. Duke’s Handbook of Medicinal Plants of the Bible. Boca
Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2008.
- Duke JA, Ayensu ES. Medicinal
Plants of China. 2 vols. Algonac, MI: Reference Publications; 1985.
- Duke JA. Culinary
Herbs: A Potpourri. New York, NY: Trado-Medic Books; 1985.
- Duke JA Handbook of
Northeastern Indian Medicinal Plants. Lincoln, MA: Quarterman Publications;
1986.
- Duke JA. Living
Liqueurs. Lincoln, MA: Quarterman Publications, Inc.; 1987.
- Duke JA. Ginseng: A
Concise Handbook. Algonac, MI: Reference Publications; 1989.
- Duke JA. Letter to
Steven Foster, June 26, 1995.
- Gates
JP. Part 9. Farming practices, evening primrose, thoughts on the future. Oral
history interview with Dr. James A. Duke. Beltsville, MD: US Department of
Agriculture, National Agricultural Library, Alternative Farming Systems
Information Center, Videocassette No. 629, 1988. Available at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/james-duke.
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