[11] From the middle of the last century there has raged an acrimonious debate as to whether there are two varieties of peyote corresponding to _Anhalonium williamsii_ and _A. lewinii_. The former, it was contended, had seven or eight straight ribs and lacked most of the alkaloids of the latter, which had more numerous (twelve or more) sinuous ribs. This long, somewhat nationalistic debate may be regarded as ended since Rouhier (_Monographie_, 67) in 1926 figured a bicephalous plant on the same root, one head being a true _williamsii_, the other a perfect _lewinii_. It is apparent that the _lewinii_ “variety” is merely an older plant, which often takes the _williamsii_ aspect in its younger stages of growth; the more numerous alkaloids of the former more mature plant is likewise purely a growth-phenomenon, as are the rib-configurations and mammillations, though environmental and seasonal conditions may be involved as well. [12] Hernandez, _De Historia Plantarum_, 204, “Se dice que hay macho y hembra.” Inaccurately translated by Safford, _Aztec Narcotic_, 295, and Rouhier, _Monographie_, 43. The simplest and most obvious translation is the most satisfactory. According to the Lipan (Opler, _Use of Peyote_, 279) male peyotes bloom red, female peyotes white. [13] Diguet, _Le Peyote_, 25; Rouhier, _Monographie_, 133. [14] _Handbook of the American Indians._ 1:604b. Spier informs me this is also Navaho and perhaps Pueblo as well. As indicated elsewhere, peyote, teo-nanacatl and associated plants have repeatedly been thought to be aphrodisiacs. The supposed sex of the plants may have some reference to this belief; cf. the Huichol belief that “Maize is a little girl whom one sometimes can hear weeping in the fields; she is afraid of the wild beasts, the coyote and others that eat corn” (Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 2:279). Different colors of corn belong to different deities also; it is interesting to note that the Huichol attribute different colors symbolically to peyote which have no effective reality (Rouhier, _op. cit._, 133). In 1935, in a non-peyote context, Apekaum told me that cotton plants in a field we were passing were male and female; some trees were male, too, and others female, he thought. No botanical realities were involved in any of these cases. The Jivaro also attribute sex to plants (Karsten, _Civilization_, 301, 304-06, 314-15, 323) as do the Aymará and others. [15] Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:362. [16] Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 295. [17] Mooney, _Tarumari-Guayachic_; Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, 1:365; Bennett and Zingg, _The Tarahumara_, 293.