BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS VoL. 27, No. 5-6 
May-JUNE 1979. 
DISCOVERY OF AN ANCIENT GUAYUSA 
PLANTATION IN COLOMBIA 
RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES 
I. 
Ilex Guayusa Loes.* represents one of the caffeine yielding 
species of /lex which is used, and has been from early times, asa 
stimulant, emetic and medicine (Schultes, 1972). It is also one of 
the most poorly understood species of the genus. 
Loesener described //lex Guayusa from sterile material as a 
“species nova atque dubia” (Loesener, 1901). Flowering material 
was not available to him in 1901. Nor has any flowering mate- 
rial, to the best of my knowledge, been collected until very 
recently. Notwithstanding the uncertainty that Loesener himself 
expressed concerning the validity of his species, //lex Guayusa 
has always been accepted as a “good” species. 
Actually, there have been very few specimens collected of this 
locally important plant. It is now apparently native to eastern 
Ecuador and adjacent Peru and Colombia. Although the Eng- 
lish plant-explorer Richard Spruce was thoroughly familiar with 
guayusa, he seems never to have collected it during his assiduous 
collecting in Amazonian Peru and Ecuador 120 years ago 
(Schultes, 1978; Spruce, 1901). 
There is in the herbarium at Kew an unidentified collection of 
Ilex made during the last century in Guilaguiza and Zamora, 
Ecuador (E. C. Lehmann 5581). 1 have studied the specimen, 
which has a few remnants of dried fruits still adhering to the 
twigs, and I believe that, while it may possibly represent Ilex 
Guayusa, it can be so determined only with strong reservation. 
In 1939, Dr. Erik Asplund of the Riksmuseet in Stockholm 
made an excellent collection of /lex Guayusa in Tena, Provincia 
Napo-Pastaza, Ecuador (£. Asplund 9485). This collection is 
sterile. 
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