A prickly or thorny plant native to Mexico and the southwestern United States, sometimes used traditionally for medicinal purposes.
From Nahuatl (Aztec language) origin, likely related to indigenous plant names. The word passed into Spanish and then English through botanical and ethnobotanical study of Mexican plants.
Chicalote is a prickly poppy that Indigenous peoples used as medicine, and Spanish colonizers were amazed by how many useful plants grew in Mexico—they sent thousands of plants back to Europe and Asia, reshaping global medicine and food forever. One person's local weed became another continent's cure!
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