The same is true of the botanist Cuatrecasas (4), who 
studied the narcotic in the same area in 1939. The Co- 
lombian botanist Garcia-Barriga (8), who has met with 
yaje in this and other areas, mentions only Banisteriop- 
sis as the principal ingredient. Schultes has seen yaje 
prepared and has partaken of it on anumber of occasions 
in the Putumayo and elsewhere in Colombia and has not 
seen used as the basic plant anything but a species of 
Banisteriopsis. The Russian botanists, Varanof and 
Juzepezuk, who studied the problem in the Colombian 
Caqueté in 1925-26, likewise found several species of 
Banisteriopsis employed either alone or together in pre- 
paring yaye (9, 10). 
In 1956, the Brazilian chemist Costa (8) on the basis 
of isolation of the alkaloid yageine from species of the 
Amazon basin identified yaje with Banisteriopsis Caapi. 
A suggestion that ayahuasca and yaje might be differ- 
ent plants seems first to have been advanced by the 
French anthropologist Reinberg (23). His study of tribes 
living between the Rio Napo and Rio Curaray in Peru 
led him to publish in 1921 the statement that the nar- 
cotic drink was an infusion of a few fragments of aya- 
huasca, a liana the diameter of a man’s thumb, and leaves 
of yqje, ‘‘un petit arbuste, de Im. 50 de haut, 4 feuilles 
petiolées (petiole de 15 mm.), entiéres, ovales, longues 
de 20 cm., larges de 7 cm., reguliéres et terminées par 
une pointe de 2 cm.’’ This description, of course, could 
very accurately be applied to a species of Banisteriopsis. 
Reinberg reported that his determinations were based 
upon specimens, but a search in the herbarium at Paris 
failed to disclose the existence of any herbarium material 
at the present time. He held that his specimens showed 
that ayahuasca and caapi were conspecific, representing 
Bamnisteriopsis Caapi, but that the yaje of the Rio Cura- 
ray could, with reservations, be referred to Prestonia 
[ 113 | 
