In 1962, Albert Hofmann and his wife Anita Hofmann traveled to Mexico at the invitation of the ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson to search for the psychoactive plant "Ska Maria Pastora" (Leaves of Mary the Shepherdess), later known as Salvia divinorum. He was able to obtain samples of it, but never succeeded in identifying its active compound, which has since been identified as salvinorin A.