Tropicals & Tender Perennials: What the............???, 0 by

wrote:
Kim, they are much like B. sanguinea, but have smooth leaves and fruits with a lot of warth-like bumps on them. Usualy vulcanicola is considered to be a good species, but they might in fact be a subspecies of B. sanguinea. Vulcanicola has been found on a few locations in the south of Colombia, but are fairly good represented in the North (west) of Ecuador. They grow about 3.000 altitude, where the clouds and fog often touch the ground and the climate is frost free, but bitterly cold.

According to Holguin recently, all plants thought of as vulcanicola are in fact vulcanicola x sanguinea hybrids. This shows, because the larger part of fruits from a (seemingly) vulcanicola plant gives seedlings similar to sanguinea or heavy influenced by sanguinea. Both sanguinea and vulcanicola has been used by shamans for thousand of years to induce visions, but sanguinea was often sowed out in large plantations, vulcanicola not. The reason was that vulcanicola was so poisonous that many shamen died using it, so it was left to grow on its own and didn't follow the geographical movements of the local tribes.

Here is a picture of one of Holguins plants taken in 2007 by a tourist visiting Quito botanical gardens.

I am not currently able to confirm that this is Holguins 'Violet', which gave the bluish tint to the European vulcanicola and x flava hybrids, but it fits the description.