BOTANICAL EXPLORATION IN AMAZONIAN PERU 

 AND BRAZIL 



By ELLSWORTH P. KILLIP, 



Associate Curator, Division of Plants, U. S. National Museum 



The plant life of the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains and the 

 adjacent lowlands of the upper Amazon and its tributaries is very 

 scantily represented in the U. S. National Herbarium. Most of the 

 collecting in that area has been done by Euro]:)ean liotanists, as Spruce, 

 Poeppig", Ule, and Tessmann, and their collections are deposited in 

 European herljaria. In this region grow plants of great medicinal and 

 general commercial value, which are coming more and more into the 

 life of the people of all countries as the territory is being opened up by 

 highways and railroads, the improvement of river navigation, and the 

 airplane. Recjuests are continually being received by botanical institu- 

 tions for precise information regarding these plants, but in the absence 

 of adequate material in their study collections answers to such cjueries 

 necessarily are often meagre and unsatisfactory. 



With a view to obtaining a general collection of the plants of the 

 eastern slopes of the Andes of Peru and of the eastern and north- 

 eastern parts of that country known as the montaiia, an expedition was 

 sent into the field by the Smithsonian Institution in March, 1929. The 

 party, consisting of Mr. Albert C. Smith, Mr. William J. Dennis, and 

 myself, reached Lima April 9, arrangements then being made for 

 proceeding to the montana with the least possible delay in the high 

 mountains. Fairly large collections, however, were made at three 

 points in the Cordilleras: Rio Blanco, at 11,500 feet altitude, on the 

 remarkable railroad which, starting at sea-level, crosses the Andes at 

 15.600 feet elevation, and follows the Mantaro Valley to the important 

 city of Huancayo ; Tarma, on the main route of travel between Lima 

 and the montana ; and at the base of the glaciers on Mount Juntay, 

 15,000 feet above sea-level. On our visit to this interesting isolated 

 snow-mountain we were accompanied by Mr. Paul Ledig, director of 

 the Magnetic Observatory of the Carnegie Institution, our headquar- 

 ters at Huancayo. 



At Huanta, a town several miles south of Huancayo, in the Depart- 

 ment of Ayacucho, we outfitted for our first trip to the montana. To 

 hire mules was impossible, so the subprefect of the province sent sol- 

 diers into the surrounding country to commandeer beasts and equip- 



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