NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 143 
first phytomer, even after they have reached a consider- 
able size. 
On the whole, therefore, it seems necessary to recognize 
Y. gigantea as distinct from Y. gloriosa and Y. Gruate- 
malensis,— its nearest allies, and the Azorean specimen 
here figured may be taken as an excellent example of this 
species. Concerning it, Sr. do Canto informs me that it 
was purchased as a 2- or 3-year old seedling, in March, 
1854, from Makoy, of Liége, under the name of Dra- 
caena, sp. 
Yucca gigantea * was first described and named by Le- 
maire, who found it in flower in October, 1859, in the 
houses of M. Verschaffelt, of Gand, who had obtained it 
from an amateur near Antwerp, who knew nothing of its 
origin and had seen only two or three specimens. M. 
Lemaire states that until it bloomed he had regarded it as 
an unpublished species of Dracaena (under which name, as 
above stated, it appears that Sr. do Canto had purchased it 
some five years earlier) or perhaps of Fourcroya; and he 
assumes its native home to be probably Mexico. 
Some three years ago, the Garden received from Dr. F. 
Franceschi, of Santa Barbara, Cal., a small plant of the 
same species, which, with three others, he had obtained 
from a European correspondent, all of them being rooted 
cuttings of the stem of an older plant which he thinks came 
from Belgium, probably from the original collection on 
which the specific description was based. Dr, Franceschi 
adds that he does not know that seeds of it have ever been 
handled by the trade; and that on a young specimen 
planted out in his grounds the leaves have reached a length 
of four feet, and a breadth of four inches. 
While the relatively large size of all of its parts, as shown 
in house-grown specimens, seemed so striking to the author 
of the species as to lead him to call it * the king,’’ ‘‘ the 
* Lemaire, Illustr. Horticole 6. Miscellanées 91. Nov. 1859; Revue 
Horticole 9: 222. 1860.— Baker, Journ. Linn. Soc., Bot. 18: 224. 1880. 
ete! 
