Botanical Museum Leaflet 

 Fall 1983 



Vol. 29, No. 4 



DE PLANUS TOXICARIIS 



E MUNDO NOVO TROPICALES 



COMMENTATIONES XXXIII 



ETHNOBOTANICAL, FLORISTIC AND 



NOMENCLATURAL NOTES ON 



PLANTS OF THE NORTHWEST AMAZON 



Richard Evans Schultes 



There is little doubt that the northwestern part of the 

 Amazon Valley — especially that part lying within the bound- 

 aries of the Republic of Colombia — has a flora made up of more 

 species than perhaps any other equal extension of the tropical 

 world. It has been estimated that some 80,000 to 85,000 species 

 of higher plants comprise its flora. 



The greater part of this vast assemblage of plant species has 

 never been subjected to chemical study. In fact, there exist entire 

 families endemic to this region of which we know nothing 

 concerning the chemical constitution of the species. One method 



arm 



on this wealth of species is to explore the ethnobotanical 

 knowledge which native peoples over the millenia have amassed 

 by trial and error about the properties of plants in their ambient 

 vegetation. 



During the course of many years of field work in the 

 Colombian Amazon, I have been able to collect specimens of 

 many medicinally esteemed species, to record a large number of 

 plant names in the rapidly disappearing native languages and to 

 collect several species or genera wholly unknown in the 



mb 



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on field work, concerning native uses of plants and floristic and 

 nomenclatural information on the flora of the Amazonia, 

 primarily that part included in the Republic of Colombia. 



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