BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CAMBRIDGE, MAssacusetts. May 30, 1977. 
VoL. 25, No. 4. 
DE PLANTIS TOXICARIIS E MUNDO NOVO 
TROPICALE COMMENTATIONES XVI 
Miscellaneous notes on biodynamic plants of South America 
RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES 
The many plants with toxic or otherwise biodynamic proper- 
ties in the South American flora are surprisingly interesting in 
their botanical diversity. Knowledge and occasional use of these 
properties appear to be unusually extensive amongst the natives 
of the northwesternmost part of the Amazon Valley, especially 
in that sector lying within the boundaries of Colombia. 
Ethnotoxicological reports in the literature have not been so 
extensive for this area as they have been for some of the other 
better known sectors of this great basin. 
Many of the species mentioned in the following pages belong 
to families and genera hitherto not known to possess active 
organic constituents. Consequently, their ethnotoxicological 
study frequently may yield chemotaxonomically or even phar- 
macologically significant information. Often this kind of infor- 
mation may indicate the advisability of critical phytochemical 
investigation. 
Earlier contributions in this series have provided ethnobotan- 
ical observations designed to encourage medically oriented ex- 
amination of chosen elements of the tropical American flora. 
Many of the notes cited below are taken from my own field 
observations during plant exploration in the Amazon Valley 
from 1941 through 1953 and on many subsequent short trips to 
the southeastern part of the Republic of Colombia. Other obser- 
vations are extracted from the labels of herbarium collections 
and are here published either because of their own intrinsic 
significance or because they outline uses similar to those which I 
have encountered for the same or related species. 
