Quassia
Quassia amara
A tropical bitter-wood. Historically a hop-like bittering and an insecticide wood. Not a vegetable and not a home-tea experiment without knowing what you bought.
GROW → HARVEST → EAT → DRY → POWDER → CAPSULE → GUMMY — forms are not equivalent. Food first.
Identity
What it is
A tropical bitter-wood. Historically a hop-like bittering and an insecticide wood. Not a vegetable and not a home-tea experiment without knowing what you bought.
From the existing encyclopedia
Quassia has a long folk history; modern aaaLifetime pages focus on food-grade pantry use, not treatment claims. Introduce new ingredients gradually in cooking portions to learn flavor strength before scaling recipes. Pairs well with garlic, onion, and black pepper in savory dishes. When substituting dried Quassia for fresh, use about one-third the volume and bloom in fat or hot water before adding acid or dairy.
Edible portions
Safety Not treated as food on this site.
Growing
- Climate. 10–12 shrub/tree
- Light. Tropical sun to part shade
- Soil. Well-drained tropical
- Planting. Not a temperate herb.
Traditional uses
Traditional use Bitter tonic wood — traditional/industrial bitter, not food-first produce
AAA interpretation Traditional use is not automatically evidence, and evidence is not automatically a shopping recommendation.
Safety
- Intense bitter. Not a pantry staple. Do not dose as a parasite protocol from a website.
Next steps
Sources
- USDA PLANTS Database — taxonomy and range (verify current entries)
- No USDA FoodData Central nutrient profile is attached here. That is not a claim that the plant contains no nutrients.
- State cooperative extension growing guides — verify for your region
- Integrated from the existing aaaLifetime / quantum-biohack encyclopedia corpus (unique text preserved where it was not boilerplate).
Honest incompleteness is preferred to fabricated completeness. If a section is missing, no record for it is attached here — not a claim that the plant lacks that characteristic, and not that it was omitted as a secret.
Internal quality class B. Good foundation: enough unique information to exist as its own destination.