REMARKS ON GUACO PLANTS. 17 
The Guaco plants are referred by most authors to an Aristolochia, a 
Mikania, and some unknown Convolvulacea. In the interior of Ecuador 
the inhabitants showed to me pieces of wood bearing the name of Guaco, 
and said to have come from the coast. They were extremely bitter, but 
their structure and size differed entirely from any of those to which I 
have alluded. The Guaco of Nueva Granada is the Mikania Guaco, 
Humb. et Bonpl. (Plantes Equinoxiales, tab. 105), the variegated leaves 
of which render it a conspicuous object in a forest, and make it a matter 
of surprise that it is not more frequently met with in our gardens now 
that plants with similar foliage are so much in fashion. 
In Mexico several plants are called Guaco or Huaco, and Dr. Pablo 
de la Llave seems to have been eagerly collecting materials for a general 
article on them. Among his posthumous papers is one on this sub- 
ject, which apparently is unfinished, and would have been much better 
left unpublished; but as it has already appeared in a Mexican pe- 
riodical, I shall make the following extracts from it:—‘I have re- 
ceived from Cordoba,” says the Mexican naturalist, “four plants, all 
of which, though specifically distinct} bear the name of Huaco; and 
moreover I possess six creepers from other parts, to which the same 
appellation is given. One of the latter is an Aristolochia, and I want 
to direct particular attention to the circumstance that it is a very dis- 
tant part of South America whence it came, and where it is known by 
name of Huaco, and as a plant counteracting the venom of snakes, 
and that here in Mexico the same appellation is given to creepers 
which possess the same properties,—a remarkable coincidence, from 
which it would appear that a far more active exchange of ideas has 
been carried on between the untutored many than among the learned 
few *, 
of them described in Sprengel's * Systema Vegetabilium,’ though they 
approach closely to several species enumerated in that work, and I 
therefore subjoin the following diagnosis of them :— 
* I. MIKANIA CORIACEA, La Llave. 
“ Caulis volubilis, striatus, foliorum insertionis puneto-annulatus ; pe- 
* The author, in order still farther to prove this “ comercio activo en la materia 
de conocimiento," quotes several instances where, in different countries, the same 
names are given to similar animals.—B. 5. 
“The Cordoba plants belong to the genus Mikania, but I find none | 
