556 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



described is borne this fruit called " pitahaya," which is very red, like rosy 

 crimson, and the name signifies " scales on the rind," though they are not such ; 

 and it has a thick skin, and this when cut with a knife (which is done easily) 

 is full of little seeds within, like a fig ; but they are mixed with a paste or pulp 

 which, together with the seeds, is of a fine crimson color ; and the whole mixture, 

 seeds and all, is eaten, and whatever it touches remains as red as though 

 touched by mulberries, and even more so. The fruit is wholesome and is 

 relished by many, but I should prefer many others to it. It affects the urine 

 the same as tunas, though not so quickly, but two hours after two or three of 

 them are eaten the urine appears like blood itself. It is not a bad fruit nor 

 harmful, and appears well to the sight. The thistles on which these pitahayas 

 are borne are an obnoxious thing, and of much strangeness their forms, the 

 which are green and the spines gray or whitish, and the fruit red, as I have 

 said, and as I have drawn it (pi, 3, fig. 3). In removing a pitahaya from 

 where it grows one must not be in a hurry, nor be without caution and a good 

 knife, because those thistles are close together, crowded, and many, and very 

 well armed. Other pitahayas there be, which ditfer neither more nor less from 

 the ones I have described, together with their thistles, in any manner or in 

 taste, but only in color ; because these others are yellow and what is within them 

 is white, which is eaten, and the little seeds are black, and they do not cause 

 any change in the urine. I have made ink of the first kind and written with it, 

 and it is of excellent color, between purple and bright crimson." 



Tlie identity of the plant described by Oviedo has not been estab- 

 lished. It may possibly be the variable Acanthocereus pentagonus. 

 The accompanying figure (pi. 12) is a photograph by Mr. G. N. 

 Collins of a plant growing on the island of Porto Rico. It corre- 

 sponds perfectly with Plumier's plate 200, figure 2, on which Haworth 

 founded the species Cereus ti'igonus^ and differs from Oviedo's plant 

 in the shortness of the spines and in other respects. The branches 

 of the species here figured are sometimes triangular and sometimes 

 quadrangular. The fruit is rose-colored on the stirface and it is filled 

 with white, agreeable-tasting pulp surrounding the numerous small 

 black seeds.'' Hylocereus trigonus is characterized by salient points 

 on the ribs, which bear the areolae. In H. triangularis the areolae are 

 situated in the notches of crenations. Closely allied to the latter 

 species is a triangular cereus growing on the garden walls of the city 

 of Guadalajara, recently described by M. Robert Roland Gosselin 

 under the name Cereus tricostatus (pi. 6, fig. 1). This plant is char- 

 acterized by its sharp, thin ribs, which are prominently gibbous be- 

 tween the areoles. The spines are quite small and few in ninnber, 

 sometimes only two, or even solitary. The fruit is sold in the market 

 of Guadalajara, both fresh and dried, under the name pitahaya. 



o Oviedo. Hist. Gen. y Nat. de las Indias, lib. 8, Cap. 26, pi. 3, fig. 9. 1535. 

 Ed. of Jose Amador de los Rios, p. 311. 1851. 



* See Cook and Collins. The Economic Plants of Porto Rico, Contr. U, S. 

 National Herbarium, vol. 7, p. 112, pi, 25, 1903, 



