ABSTRACT
Veracruz, Tabasco) in Spanish, have fascinated people since the first Europeans arrived in the New World. The flowers open in the evening, they are strongly scented, and they attract large nocturnal sphinx moths (Sphingidae). That combination of traits, plus some others, enticed the Spanish to carry the seeds back to Europe and then to the rest of the world within the first few years after 1492. The plants became pantropical so quickly that until recently there remained a cloud of confusion about their origin. Most people, from at least the 1750s to the present, thought that the first mention of the moonvine was by H.A.Rheede in his list of plants cultivated in Malabar, India, in the 1680s. However, it appears that the first record was made by an early Spanish historian. Shortly after his arrival in Panama in 1514, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo wrote about the flor de la Y that he found in Cuba (Oviedo [1526] 1969). All students of that island have equated that account with I. alba, and Oviedo’s brief description fits.
