There, in 1857, was a group of Guayusa trees, supposed to date 
from before the Conquest, that is, to be considerably over 300 
years old. They were not unlike old Holly trees in England, 
except that the shining leaves were much larger, thinner and 
unarmed. 
“When I travelled overland through the forest of Canelos, and 
my coffee gave out, I made tea of guayusa leaves, and found it 
very palatable. The Jibaros make the infusion so strong that it 
becomes positively emetic. The guayusa-pot, carefully covered 
up, is kept simmering on the fire all night, and when the Indian 
wakes up in the morning he drinks enough guayusa to make him 
vomit, his notion being that if any food remain undigested on 
the stomach, that organ should be aided to free itself of the 
encumbrance. Mothers give a strong draught of it, and a feather 
to tickle the throat with, to male children of very tender age. | 
rather think its use is tabooed to females of all ages, like caapi on 
the Uaupes.” 
An hitherto apparently unpublished Spruce note on guayusa, 
preserved at Kew, in a letter to the “Agent of Ecuador Land 
Company (Mr. G. P. Pritchett) in a reply to enquiries about the 
feasibility of forming a colony of Europeans in Forests of Cane- 
los (written at Bafios, Dec. 1857)” gives additional information 
on guayusa and would seem to support the suspicion that the 
centre of distribution of the plant was the eastern slopes of the 
Ecuadorian Andes (Schultes, 1978). “I am not sure that the 
Guayusa, which the wild Inds plant near their houses might not 
successfully compete in the English market against the inferior 
sorts of Tea. This is the leaf of a sort of holly, perfectly difft from 
the Mate or Paraguay Tea, tho somewhat allied to it, and it has 
much the same aromatic flavour without the bitterness of Chi- 
nese tea. I have used it for weeks of thogt instead of tea, & I 
believe you have drunk [?] some.” 
Although the centre of use of /lex Guayusa in the 18th Cen- 
tury appears to have been the eastern Andean slopes of Ecuador 
and northern Peru, the plant was recorded from Colombia, 
somewhat to the north of this area. 
A missionary, Padre Juan Serra (Serra, 1956), who worked in 
the Putumayo-Caqueta region of Colombia from 1756 to 1767, 
wrote that guayusa was used by the head Franciscan priest, 
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