The story of the Mamou, a medicinal plant of the Cajun Country.

Mamou is not a large town. It sits in the midst of the former prairie, now converted to agriculture and with flat square fields stretching away to the horizon in all directions. An enormous water tower dominates the town; painted large on the huge tank of the tower, the name MAMOU is visible from afar.

Intriguingly, one of the Acadian folk names for Erythrina herbacea, a native plant of great beauty and high interest, is the same as the name of the town - Mamou. What could be the connection, if any, between the town name and the plant name? Did the town and the plant have different origins for their names? Or do both names trace to the Prairie Mamou? And how did the prairie come by its name?

Mamou is a beautiful plant. Its three-parted leaves of delicate hues of green and the leaflets surprisingly similar to the leaves of the tallow tree, its subtle but sharp prickles on branches and leaf stalks, its scarlet hummingbird-attracting flowers followed by the large lumpy, black pods with their beautiful glossy vermillion beans, all combine to make it one of the loveliest and most intriguing native plants of Acadiana. Its reputation as a medicinal plant adds to its allure and mystique.

The mamou plant seems to have a long history of use in folk medicine in Acadiana. Unfortunately, however, little information on its medicinal uses exists in print. Much of what is recorded in the present account came from oral sources. The appended bibliography to this work includes annotated references to the rather scanty literature of mamou as a folk medicine plant. In the Acadiana area E. herbacea was, and still is, used by families and traiteurs as a treatment for specified medical disorders, as noted below, and the plants are still cultivated by families and traiteurs as a constant source of the parts used to make medicine -seeds, leaves, and roots. The mamou is taken as medicine in the form of "the de mamou" or "sirop de mamou."

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