Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoction

Decoction

Decoction is a method of extraction, by boiling, of dissolved chemicals, or herbal or plant material, which may include stems, roots, bark and rhizomes. Decoction involves first mashing, and then boiling in water to extract oils, volatile organic compounds, and other chemical substances...

s prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp.

Banisteriopsis caapi

Banisteriopsis caapi, also known as Ayahuasca, Caapi or Yage, is a South American jungle vine of the family Malpighiaceae. It is used to prepare Ayahuasca, a decoction that has a long history of entheogenic uses as a medicine and "plant teacher" among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Rainforest...

vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine

Dimethyltryptamine

N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. DMT is found in several plants, and also in trace amounts in humans and other mammals, where it is originally derived from the essential amino acid tryptophan, and ultimately produced by the enzyme INMT...

-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria

Psychotria

Psychotria is a plant genus of 1900 species in the family Rubiaceae. Members of the genus are low trees in tropical forests. The distinction between Psychotria and the genus Cephaelis are not well known and many species were formerly placed there....

genus. The brew, first described academically in the early 1950s by Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes

Richard Evans Schultes

Richard Evans Schultes may be considered the father of modern ethnobotany, for his studies of indigenous peoples' uses of plants, including especially entheogenic or hallucinogenic plants , for his lifelong collaborations with chemists, and...

, who found it employed for divinatory and healing purposes by the native peoples of the Amazonian

Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...

 Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, is known by a number of different names (see below).