BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 30, 1977 ToL. 25, No. 6 
A NATIVE DRAWING OF AN HALLUCINOGENIC 
PLANT FROM COLOMBIA 
RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES! 
and 
ALEC BRIGHT? 
There has recently been discovered an interesting and un- 
doubtedly very significant drawing of an hallucinogenic plant 
made by an Indian artist in southern Colombia. We have been 
able to identify this plant as Brugmansia vulcanicola a species 
only recently described as Datura vulcanicola A. S. Barclay, 
from the Andes of southern Colombia (Barclay, 1959). 
The drawing, reproduced here, shows a shrub or small tree 
with tubular flowers and an Indian woman sitting beneath its 
branches. It is entitled ‘‘Mujer al pie de borrachero’’ (Woman 
at the foot of a borrachero tree). The name of the plant in the 
Indian dialect is given as yas. Drawn a quarter of a century ago 
in Popaydn, Colombia, by a Guambiano Indian from the region 
of Silvia — Francisco Tumina Pillimue — it has been published 
ina book of many interesting drawings by the same native artist 
entitled Nuestra Gente — Namuy Misag, with a text by Dr. 
Gregorio Hernandez de Alba (Tumina P., 1949). 
The drawing has all of the characteristics of indigenous art, 
especially as to lack of detail and disregard of relative size. Yet 
we believe that it is possible to identify this drawing with 
certainty as representative of the solanaceous Brugmansia 
vulcanicola. The leaves match in shape those of this species. 
The flowers — with a dentate calyx, almost regularly tubular 
corolla with a slightly flaring dentate lip — match the charac- 
ters of this plant. Furthermore, the shape and surface texture of 
the fruit are the same. The name borrachero is applied to all of 
‘Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 
*Museo del Oro, Bogota, Colombia. 
Application to mail at Second-Class Postage Rates is pending in Boston, Mass. 
