i8o NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
owing to its being the great centre of the cultiva- 
tion of Guarana, of which there are large plantations 
called guaranals near the town, as also higher up 
the Mauhe and on the Canoma ; and near the head 
of those streams the plant is said to grow wild. 
I afterwards saw the plant cultivated on the Rio 
Negro, where I drew up a description and prepared 
specimens of it. 
The Guarana plant [Paullinia Cupaita, Humb. 
and Bonpl., of the natural order Sapindacese) is a 
stout twiner, whose scandent propensities are kept 
down in cultivation, so as to reduce it to a compact 
bush with sinuous entangled branches. The leaves 
are pinnate, of five leaflets, each nearly half a foot 
long, oval, and coarsely serrated. The racemes 
have small white flowers set on them in clusters, 
and in fruit are pendulous. The fruits are about 
an inch and a half long, pear-shaped, with a short 
beak, yellow, passing to red at the point ; and they 
enclose a single black shining seed about three- 
quarters of an inch in diameter, half-enveloped in a 
white cup-shaped aril. 
The fruit is gathered when fully ripe, and the 
seeds are picked out of the pericarp and aril, which 
dye the hands of those who perform the operation a 
permanent yellow. The seeds are then roasted, 
pounded, and made up into sticks, much in the 
same way as chocolate, which they somewhat re- 
semble in colour. In 1850 a stick of guarana used 
to weigh from one to two pounds, and was sold 
at about one milreis ( = 2s. 4d.) the pound at 
Santarem ; but at Cuyaba, the centre of the gold 
and diamond region, it was worth six or eight 
