A LITTLE-KNOWN CULTIVATED PLANT 
FROM NORTHERN SOUTH AMERICA 
BY 
RicHarp Evans SCHULTES 
I'r is not often that an important economic plant, culti- 
vated over a wide area, hides out from the eyes of plant- 
explorers, anthropologists, missionaries and travellers— 
even in an area with such a poorly understood agricul- 
ture as the Amazon Valley. Yet that has apparently 
come to pass in the case of Solanum Topiro HBA. 
I 
During my travels in the northwestern part of the 
Amazon basin, principally in Colombian territory, it was 
my custom always to study the plants cultivated by the 
Indian inhabitants of the region. 
It is possible, in general, to arrange the plants which 
the natives of this tropical forest-region grow into two 
large categories on the basis of the manner in which they 
are cultivated. Native agriculture in the western Ama- 
zon has been called, and [ think perhaps erroneously, 
‘*primitive.’” Whether or not it be primitive, it is true 
that no machinery is employed, and little or no formal 
planning underlies agricultural practices. Plants are either 
set out in fields devoted to a single crop or else they are 
put in or allowed to spring up individually at random 
mingled with several or many different species. 
The first of these two categories can claim, at least, in 
the northwestern part of the vast Amazon, only two spe- 
cies: yuca (Manihot esculenta Crantz) and coca (diry- 
throvylon Coca Vam.). All other cultigens grow singly 
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