late; calyx bracteolate, tomentulose; petals pure white, linear 
oblong, the slender claws as long as the calyx; stamen tube 
twice as long as the calyx; fruit subglobose’’. (Standley, 1923). 
According to Standley, this species is reported from Oaxaca 
and Veracruz, Mexico, and occurs also in Guatemala and El 
Salvador. A map presented by Pennington and Sarukhan (1968) 
indicates that the tree ranges disjuctively in northern Veracruz, 
northeastern Oaxaca, northern Chiapas into Guatemala along 
the Pacific coast of Chiapas. None of these sources indicates 
that the type locality is in Puebla, although Izucar de 
Matamoros, the type locality, is in the State of Puebla. The 
locality of my collection from Huayapan, near Oaxaca City, 
also appears to be outside of the ranges noted by the above 
authorities. Consequently, we must presume that the distribu- 
tion of the tree is wider than hitherto indicated in the literature. 
We must remember, however, that the trees in Izucar and 
Huayapan were cultivated. Therefore, these and trees reported 
from other localities outside of the natural range of the species, 
may have been taken by man from the areas where it is wild and 
planted for their usefulness and beauty elsewhere. 
The collection upon which this article is based (Frederic 
Rosengarten, Jr. s. n., July 16, 1977, Huayapan, Oaxaca, 
Mexico) has been deposited in the Botanical Museum of Har- 
vard University. 
An early and interesting illustration of Q. funebris is repro- 
duced herein (Plate 39); this drawing was made by a primitive 
Mexican artist during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. 
The artist’s intention was to portray the cacahoaxochitl tree 
with Indians gathering flowers. As sometimes occurs in primi- 
tive art, the relative proportions are not realistic in that the size 
of the flowers — the important part — is highly exaggerated. 
(Drawn as an illustration for the Historia general de las cosas 
de Nueva Espana of Bernardino de Sahagun and reproduced 
from the Paso y Troncoso edition, first published in 1905). 
The curious specific name “‘funebris’> was chosen by the 
Spanish botanist, Pablo de La Llave (1825), when he heard that 
the local inhabitants of the Mexican village of Izucar, near 
Puebla, were accustomed to mourn their dead under the shelter 
of the thick foliage of the lower branches of a cacahoaxochitl 
187 
