Note 28 — Chapter III · (continued 2)

As happens with many other plants described by early botanists, there has been much confusion in regard to the species named by Linnæus Lobelia Tupa. The plant was first made known to Europeans by the excellent traveller, Father Feuillée, whose “Journal des Observations Physiques Mathématiques et Botaniques faites sur les côtes de l’Amérique meridionale, etc.,” published in 1714, is a book which may still be consulted with advantage. His descriptions of plants are usually careful and accurate, but the accompanying plates all ill-executed and often misleading. Linnæus, followed by Willdenow, refers to Feuillée’s work, but gives a very brief descriptive phrase which suits equally well Feuillée’s plant and several others subsequently discovered. Aiton, in the “Hortus Kewensis,” gives the name Lobelia Tupa to a plant which is plentiful about Valparaiso, where I found it still in flower, the seeds of which were received at Kew about a century ago from Menzies. This is now generally known by the not very appropriate name Tupa salicifolia of Don, but was first published by Sims in the Botanical Magazine, No. 1325, as Lobelia gigantea, which name it should now bear. The plant which I found near Cauquenes appears to be the Tupa Berterii of Decaudolle, a rare species, apparently not known to the authors of the “Flora Chilena.” No doubt could have arisen as to the plant intended by Linnæus as Lobelia Tupa if writers had referred to Feuillée’s full and accurate description. His account of the poisonous effects of the plant was probably derived from the Indians, and may be exaggerated. The whole plant, he says, is most poisonous, the mere smell causing vomiting, and any one touching his eyes after handling the leaves is seized with blindness. I may remark that the latter statement, which appears highly improbable, receives some confirmation from the observations of Mr. Nation, mentioned above in page 77. The plant which I saw in Peru, but failed to collect, is much smaller than most of the Chilian species, and has purple flowers, but is nearly allied in structure. It is probably the Tupa secunda of Don. I gather from a passage in one of Mr. Philippi’s writings that the word tupa in Araucanian signifies poison. We are yet, I believe, ignorant of the chemical nature of the poisonous principle contained in the plants of this group.