This plant hath many names, as urucu, roucou, rocour, orleana seu orellana, ouroucou. Tournefort calls it mitella Americana maxima tinctoria, and so doth Plumier. Hernandez and the Indians call it achiotl, seu medicina tingendo apta.
The figure of the plant, with its flower and fruit, is extraordinary well designed in Piso. The leaves are cordated, or in the figure of an heart, about four inches long and about two broad, coming out alternately from the stalks and branches, having a sort of foot-stalk, and a nerve running through the whole leaf, with transverse or oblique veins on each side; at the ends of the branches come out, upon a short foot-stalk, many flowers in clusters, every flower the bigness of a small rose, with five leaves of a carnation colour, with a great many yellow stamina, or thrums, with purple tips; after the flower follows the fruit, or cod, which is in the shape of the leaf, but not so broad, covered with a very rough coat, like the chesnut, which is first green, and, as it ripens, grows of a dark brown, and then opens of itself. Every cod contains about thirty or forty seeds, about the bigness and shape of buck wheat, having a splendid red colour, and a little oily; so that it tinges or paints the fingers of a reddish colour, not easily got out with washing; and it is what sticks to the outside of the seed which makes the paste called anotto; which they get by washing it off with water, and after separate the water and make the paste up into balls. This the dyers use to make a colour they call aurora. I have known it sold in America for nine shillings per pound, but now of low price, and much out of use.
There is a magistery prepared with the paste, as followeth: Take fine flour of cassada, orange-flower water, white sugar, Brazil pepper, and the flowers of nhambi, all finely mixed. (See more of the preparation in Piso, p. 116.) This magistery is given to persons that are poisoned, in wastings and consumptions, hectic fevers, and immoderate sweatings; it stops bloody fluxes, strengthens the stomach, and provokes urine and the gravel; there is also an extract to be made out of the roots, which is of the same nature as the paste. Anotto is commonly put in chocolate; and the Spaniards mix it with their sauces, and broths, or soups, which gives them a saffron colour, and a pleasant taste.—Barham, p. 4, 5.