I had gathered in the northwest Amazon puzzled me for 
a number of years. I was finally able to match my ma- 
terial collected in Colombia under the name /u/o with 
cocona through illustrations of cocona found in the Mor- 
ton Collectanea and to learn that cocona had been deter- 
mined as Solanum hyporhodium. In trying to check the 
accuracy of this determination, I discovered that there 
was no material representative of Solanum hyporhodium 
in our American herbaria. The type, and, apparently the 
only specimen of this species, was preserved in the Berlin 
Herbarium and, of course, is no longer extant. There is, 
nevertheless, a photograph of the type of Solanum hy- 
porhodium in the Gray Herbarium. It is at once obvious 
that cocona cannot be referred to Solanum hyporhodium, 
for the photograph indicates that there are differences in 
the leaf and that iS. hyporhodium has stems and petioles 
which are heavily spinose. The cocona collected originally 
in Peru, as well as all of my own specimens from Colom- 
bia and recent Venezuelan material, is entirely without 
spines and has the petioles clad with a soft mottled indu- 
mentum. Fennell’s published notes (loc. cit.), indeed, 
stress the lack of spines. 
It was possible for me finally to identify cocona or lulo 
by using one of the common Venezuelan names of the 
species. The non-Indian population of the Colombian 
Amazonia know the plant as /w/o, because of its strong 
resemblance to the highland Solanwmn quitoense Lam., 
which, in the Andes of Colombia, is called /u/o. Along 
the border between Colombia and Venezuela, however, 
the non-Indian inhabitants refer to the plant by its Ven- 
ezuelan name fopiro or fupirvi. In H. Pittier’s **Manual 
de las plantas usuales de Venezuela” (1926) 885, there 
is an entry under the common name topiro: **Solanum 
Topiro Dunal, Synops. 10. 1810. Sin. fupiro. Especie 
herbacea, tomentosa, inerme, las hojas ovales, mis o 
[ yo 
mm t DoD | 
