DE PLANTIS TOXICARIIS E MUNDO 
NOVO TROPICALE COMMENTATIONES I 
BY 
RicHarp Evans SCHULTES 
As our phytogeographical and ethnobotanical knowledge 
of the New World tropics increases, additional informa- 
tion on the wealth of toxic plants in the flora of this area 
is brought to light. Only asmall fraction of the hundreds 
of poisonous species already known has been subjected 
to chemical and pharmacological study. In addition to 
those species that have long been recognized as toxic, 
there are many still to be found —a number of them in 
families never considered as possessing chemical constitu- 
ents with marked biological activity. 
It would seem that one of the best methods of stimu- 
lating concentrated and thorough study of the toxic 
plants of the New World tropics might be to make avail- 
able little known or hitherto unreported information on 
species that are recognized as definite poisons or which, 
for one reason or another, are suspected of being poison- 
ous. I have, consequently, decided to begin a series of 
articles with this purpose in mind. They will form part 
of more extensive investigations into the poisonous plants 
of the New World tropics which I have been carrying 
out since 1941 and which is currently being supported by 
a grant from the National Institutes of Health (No. 
LM-GM 00071-01). 
The sources of the information in this series of articles 
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