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JUAN DE ALONSO

Juan De Alonso Illustrative illustration
Juan De Alonso 2
Juan De Alonso 3

Botanical name:

Xanthium spinosum (also Acanthoxanthium spinosum)

Alternative names:

Juan de Alonso, Bathurst burr, spiny cocklebur

Main indications:

  • urinary comfort, in folk use
  • fever, in folk use

Short characteristics:

Juan de Alonso is Xanthium spinosum, the Bathurst burr or spiny cocklebur — a cosmopolitan weed with hooked burs, not an Amazonian master plant. It turns up in folk urinary teas and fever drinks in several regions, including parts of South America, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean, wherever the plant has followed livestock and roads.

The plant is a roadside burr, sometimes used as a yellow dye. Laboratory notes on extracts exist; they do not make this a cytostatic cancer herb or an infection drug. If you meet it in a folk context, it is a urinary-and-fever weed tea, taken short-term, not a jungle teacher plant and not a home treatment for kidney, prostate, or ovarian inflammation.

The usual way of use:

1 to 3 grams of dried herb (up to one full spoon) gently cooked in about 0.7 liters of water for 5 minutes. Drink through the day.

Powdered extracts follow the label. This site sells nothing.

WARNING: Can be nephrotoxic. Do not run a course past 8 weeks; then stay off at least another 8 weeks. Atractyloside-family compounds are the kidney caution. Not a “potion of life.”

Composition

Sesquiterpene lactones (xanthatin and kin) and phenolics. Atractyloside-family compounds are the kidney caution. Baldi 2022 is invasive-weed chemistry and allelopathy, not a medicine trial.

Traditional use

Cosmopolitan weed. Folk urinary and fever teas in several regions (Domokos 2016 notes Romanian urinary/prostate folk use and a rat BPH model). Not an Amazonian teacher plant. Not Corydoras — that was a copy-paste error from a catfish genus.

Precautions

Nephrotoxicity. Eight weeks on, eight weeks off. Pregnancy out. Not a cytostatic cancer herb.

Opened studies

  • Domokos et al. (2016). Xanthium spinosum in Romanian folk urinary use; rat BPH model. Acta Pharmaceutica Hungarica. Atractyloside listed. Not an Amazonian master-plant paper. PMID 27295875 · EuropePMC.

  • Baldi et al. (2022). Xanthium spinosum chemistry and allelopathy. Molecules. Invasive weed chemistry, not a medicine trial. PMID 36364122 · doi:10.3390/molecules27217297.