BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS VoL. 25, No. 2 
ICHTHYOTOXIC PLANTS AND 
THE TERM ‘‘BARBASCO”’ 
DOROTHY KAMEN-KAYE* 
One hundred years ago, Richard Spruce wrote a paper entitled 
‘Indigenous Narcotics and Stimulants Used by the Indians of 
the Amazon’’, in which he stated: ‘‘This does not profess to bea 
treatise on all known South American narcotics, or I should 
have to speak of a vast number more, such as (for instance) the 
numerous plants used for stupefying fish. Some of these, but 
especially the timb6-acy (Paullinia pinnata), are said to be also 
ingredients of the slow poisoning which some Amazonian na- 
tions are accused of practising . . . ’’ (25). ‘*Timbo”’ is the more 
common of two Brazilian terms equivalent to the Spanish **bar- 
basco’’; the other is ‘‘tingui’’. It would be the word that Spruce 
heard most frequently, since most of his exploration took place 
in the Brazilian parts of the Amazon valley. Since, however, he 
spent about six months on the Orinoco and its uppermost 
tributaries and several years in Peru and Ecuador, he must also 
have been familiar with the term “‘barbasco”’. 
I 
‘‘Barbasco’”’ is a generic term in Spanish-speaking countries 
of South America for ichthyotoxic plants. Although it is cus- 
tomarily applied to all plants with this property, a qualifying or 
descriptive term is occasionally added. Thus, Lonchocarpus 
Nicou ts often referred to as “‘barbasco legitimo’’ (genuine bar- 
basco) or Tephrosia Sinapou (T. toxicaria) as “‘barbasco de 
raiz’’ (root barbasco). Actually, neither of these terms was 
current among New World Indians utilizing plants as piscicides; 
they had their own names for fish poisons, such as ‘‘hairi”’ 
(Guyana) or ‘‘nekoe’’ (Surinam). 
*Research Fellow in Ethnobotany, Botanical Museum of Harvard Univer- 
sity. 
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