ABSTRACT

The genus Anadenanthera Spegazzini is in the section Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, order Fabales. Its first scientific description appeared in 1737 in the Hortus Cliffortianus, from a specimen growing in the Clifford Garden in Holland. Safford (1916) and Reis Altschul (1964) are of the opinion that the seed from which the type specimen was grown came from the West Indies or northern South America. The earliest valid name is Mimosa peregrina, from Linnaeus's Species Plantarum (1753; Safford 1916). Linnaeus did not specify why he applied the epithet peregrina. His description was based on the more complete entry in the Hortus Cliffortianus (Reis Altschul 1964). The 1806 Willdenow edition of Species Plantarum identified as Inga niopo the material collected by Humboldt and Bonpland along the Orinoco River. In 1814, Humboldt corrected Willdenow and identified the plant as an Acacia and not an Inga, labeling it Acacia niopo (Humboldt and Bonpland 1971). In her taxonomic study of the genus, Siri von Reis Altschul (1964) considers this specimen to be equivalent to Anadenanthera peregrina var. peregrina (see Appendix).