There are suspicions that this aromatic herb may contain 
tryptamines (Holmstedt, pers. comm.) and the plant may on 
occasion be the basis, without admixtures, of an hallucinogenic 
snuff (Chagnon et al. 1971). If the preliminary indications can be 
verified, it will for the first time establish the presence of these 
indoles in the Acanthaceae. 
There are more than 300 species of Justicia in the tropical and 
subtropical parts of both hemispheres. 
Agaricaceae 
Conocybe, Fayod; Panaeolus, (Fr.) Quélet; Psilocybe (Fr.) 
Quelet; and Stropharia (Fr.) Queélet 
The Spanish conquerors found Mexican Indians practicing 
religious rites in which mushrooms were ingested as a sacra- 
ment, permitting them to commune through hallucinations with 
the spirit world. The Aztecs knew these “sacred” mushrooms as 
teonanacatl (“food of the gods”) (Heim and Wasson 1959; La 
Barre 1959; Ott and Bigwood 1978; Safford 1915; Schultes 
1939). 
Persecution by the Roman church drove the cult into hiding 
in the hinterlands. Notwithstanding many descriptions in the 
writings of the early chroniclers, no evidence that the narcotic 
use of mushrooms had persisted was uncovered until about 40 
years ago. Botanists had even postulated that teonanacat/ might 
be the same plant as peyote: that the discoidal crown of the 
cactus, when dried, superficially resembled a dried mushroom 
and that the earlier writers had confused the two or had been 
deliberately duped by their Aztec informants (Safford |916b). 
Then, in the late 1930s, several investigators found an active 
mushroom cult amongst the Mazatecs in Oaxaca and collected, 
as the hallucinogenic fungi, Panaeolus sphinctrinus (Fr.) Quel. 
and Stropharia cubensis Earle. More intensive work during the 
1950’s brought to over 24 species, in at least four genera, the 
number of basidiomycetes employed currently in six or more 
tribes of Mexican Indians (Guzman 1959; Heim 1956a, 1956b, 
1957a, 1957b, 1963a; Schultes 1939; Schultes and Hofmann 
1973; Singer 1958; Wasson 1958; Wasson and Wasson 1957; Ott 
and Bigwood 1978). 
167 
