BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
VoL. 16, No. 5 
CAMBRIDGE, MassaAcH 
USETTs, JULY 6, 1953 
NOTES ON THE CULTIVATED LULO 
BY 
Ricuarp Evans Scuuures! AND JOSE CUATRECASAS” 
ONE of the most delicious of those cultivated fruits pe- 
culiar to the northern Andes is the /u/o or naranyillo. 
This fruit is very common from Pert and Ecuador to 
northern Colombia and Venezuela. Its area of greatest 
production centers probably in Ecuador and southern 
Colombia. 
In spite of the fact that a number of articles on this 
economic fruit have recently appeared (Pérez-Arbelaez, 
‘*Plantas medicinales y venenosas de Colombia’’ (1937) 
246; Chalons in Agric. Amer. 4 (1944) 110-112; 
McCann, ibid. 7 (1947) 146-149; Hodge in Rev. Fac. 
Nac. Agron. 7 (1947) 147-154; Hodge in Journ. N.Y. 
Bot. Gard. 48 (1947) 155-159; Pérez-Arbeléez, ‘‘Plantas 
litiles de Colombia”’ (1947) 451), little of a detailed na- 
ture has been known about the taxonomy of the source- 
plant. Although it has been generally accepted that the 
lulo represented Solanum quitoense, there is sufficient 
variation between the lulo plants from different parts of 
Colombia to raise some doubt that only one species is 
1 Botanist, Division of Rubber Plant Investigations, Bureau of Plant 
Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural Research 
Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture; Research Fellow, 
Botanical Museum of Harvard University. 
? Curator of Colombian Botany, Chicago Natural History Museum. 
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