ers with rich chocolate. The flowers are added, ordinarily 
dried, during the preparation of the beverage, which in 
Oaxaca is usually some form of pozonque. Pozonque is 
made with finely ground corn meal and chocolate and is 
very nutritious. Occasionally, young shoots of a species 
of Dioscorea are added, and the beverage is beaten vigor- 
ously into a thick, albuminous froth. Fruits and other 
ingredients may sometimes be added. 
As well as imparting to the beverage a peppery taste 
and aromatic odor, the flowers of Quararibea funebris, 
containing large quantities of mucilage, have a tendency 
to thicken the water in which the corn and cacao parti- 
cles are suspended. 
To his type description of Quararibea funebris, Liave' 
appended a long discussion of the habit, occurrence, and 
economic importance of the tree. A translation (by the 
writer) of this discussion follows. (Cf. Standley in Con- 
trib. U.S. Nat. Herb. 23 (1926) 788). 
While making a military expedition to the southern region between 
Oaxaca and Angelopolim, Guadalupe Victoria, the President of the 
Republic, passed through Izucar and admired the funereal majesty of 
Lexarza. He ordered a flowering and fruiting branch sent to me with 
the instructions that a description of it be made. Later, my beloved 
colleague, Doctor José Ignatio Luna, a worthy authority of Izucar, 
sent pictures of the tree and accurate measurements together with the 
information that the primitive natives were accustomed to come to 
mourn their dead under the magnificent shelter formed by the low 
branches of the tree. He stated also that the flowers were mixed with 
pozonque (a drink made from cold chocolate which is used at weddings 
and fiestas) in order to flavour it. For this reason, perhaps, the tree 
is popularly called cacahuazochitl, which may be rendered into Spanish 
as flor de cacao. According to this same authority, no other tree of 
the same species is found in Izucar or in the general vicinity. Doctor 
Miguel Valentino of Huamantla, an authority on natural history and 
no mean observer, studied the description of cacahuazochitl and assured 
me that on his trip through the Mixteca he saw trees of this species. 
'Llave: in Llave & Lexarza Nov. Veg. Descr. 2 (1825) 8. 
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