560 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



marked narcotic properties, on account of which it is called by the 

 Mexicans Torna-loca ("maddening weed"). By the ancient Aztecs, 

 who held it sacred, it was called Sister of the Ololiuhqui {Datura 

 TTteteloides) . It was also called Atlinan, a name applied to several 

 other water plants. In treating certain maladies their priests ad- 

 dressed to it the following prayer : 



I invoke thee, my mother, thou of the precious waters : Who is the god, or 

 who the so powerful one that wishes to destroy and consume my enchantment? 



Ea ! Come thou, Sister of the Green 

 Woman Ololiuqui, of her whom I am 

 ahout to go and leave in the seven 

 caves, where the green pain, the brown 

 pain, will conceal itself. Go and stroke 

 with thy hands the entrails of the pos- 

 sessed one, that thou mayst prove thy 

 might and fall not into ignominy." 20 



TECOMAXOCHITL OF THE AZTECS. 



Closely allied to the genus Da- 

 tura are the climbing Solandras 

 of tropical and subtropical Amer- 

 ica, one of which was figured by 

 Hernandez under the name Teco- 

 maxochitl. 30 Plants of this genus 

 contain a rnidriatic alkaloid which 

 was named solandrine by Petrie 

 (1907) and nor-hyoscy amine by 

 Carr and Reynolds (1912). 31 The 

 investigation which led to its dis- 

 covery was the result of the effects 

 of the sap of Solandra longiflora 

 accidentally squirted into the eyes 

 of a gardener while pruning a hedge of it, causing the pupils to be 

 intensely dilated, as in the effects of atropine. 



Plate 7 is a photograph of Solandra hartivcgii N. E. Brown, grown 

 in one of the Government conservatories at "Washington. The 

 flowers of this species resemble in form the angel's trumpet {Datura 

 suaveolens), and are not contracted at the throat as in Hernandez's 

 figure, or in Solandra longiflora. From the latter they also differ in 

 color, the corolla at length becoming yellow with a purple medium 



29 Jacinto de la Serna, "Manual de Ministros para el conocimiento de idolatrias y 

 extirpacion de ellas," in Documentos ineditos para la Historia de Espaiia, vol. 104, pp. 

 159-160. 



30 Hernandez, op. cit., p. 408, 1651. 



31 See Petrie, J. M., " Solandrine, a new rnidriatic alkaloid," Proc. Linn. Soc. of New 

 South Wales, vol. 32, p. 789, 1907 ; ibid., " The occurrence of nor-hyoscyamine in Solandra 

 longiflora," Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales, vol. 41, p. 815, 1916. 



Fig. 10. 



-The aquatic Torna-loco, Datura 

 ceratocaula Ortega. 



