Putumayo, inhabited chiefly by Witoto and Bora In- 
dians, definitely reported the use of the narcotics in this 
area of the northwest Amazon, but neither was able to 
offer a botanical determination. Hardenberg stated 
merely that the liana was called ayahuasca or yajén; 
Whiffen, that it was known as caapi north of the Caqueta 
or ayahuasca south of this river. Both of these explorers 
thus intimated that these sundry names referred to one 
plant. 
In 1917, Safford (83), who had devoted much study to 
New World narcotic plants, referred both ayahuwasea and 
caapi to Banisteriopsis Caapi, after an evaluation of the 
literature on the subject. 
A suggestion that ayahuasca and yajé might be differ- 
ent plants, however, can be found in Reinburg’s study 
of the tribes inhabiting the region between the Rios Napo 
and Curaray in Pert. In 1921, he wrote (69) that the nar- 
cotic drink was an infusion of a few fragments of ayahu- 
asca, a liana the diameter of a man’s thumb, and leaves 
of yajé, “‘un petit arbuste, de 1m.50 de haut, 4 feuilles 
pétiolées (pétiole de 15 mm.) entiéres, ovales, longues de 
20 cm., larges de 7 cm., réguliéres et terminées par une 
pointe de 2 cm.”’” On the basis of specimens collected, 
he held that ayahuasca, the source of which was always, 
according to his report, a wild, forest liana, and caapi 
were conspecific and represented Banisteriopsis Caapi. 
Still on the basis of specimens, he suggested that the 
yajé of the Curaray in Peru could, with reservation, be 
referred to the apocynaceous Haemadictyon (approach- 
ing, in some respects, Hl. amazonicum Benth.) or a re- 
lated genus. ' 
It was apparently Spruce (90) who first suggested that 
'The generic concept Haemadictyon has been united with Prestonia, 
and the proper name of the plant to which Reinburg referred is now 
Prestonia amazonica (Benth.) Macbride (47). 
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