- Plants
- ›Vascular Plants
- ›flowering plants
- ›Dicots
- ›Mints, Plantains, Olives, and Allies
- ›Mint Family
- ›Nepetoideae
- ›Ocimeae
- ›Ociminae
- ›Ocimum

wild sweet basil
Ocimum campechianum
Ocimum campechianum is a plant species in the family Lamiaceae, widespread across Mexico, Central America, South America, the West Indies, and Florida.
Leaves of Ocimum campechianum are eaten in Brazil's Amazon jungle. Similar to basil, it has a pungent flavor and contains essential oils which have been used ethnomedicinally. In Amazonia, the aromatic leaves are used as an admixture in ayahuasca brews. The plant is known as albahaca in Mexico and called xkakaltun in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where it is considered a honey plant and is used as an abortifacient. It is referred to in Brazil as alfavaca and has also been referred to as albahaca del monte, Amazonian basil, wild sweet basil, wild mosquito plant, least basil, Peruvian basil, spice basil, alfavaca-do-campo, manjericao and estoraque.
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Ocimum campechianum in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 83257.