﻿LITERATURE OF FURCRAEA WITH SYNOPtsIS OF SPECIES. 29 



There is a Furcraea naturalized in the Sibpur Botanic Gar- 

 den which appeared to Col. Prain and the writer to be the 

 true yigantea of Ventenat, and in this the leaf is sometimes 

 quite devoid of margin prickles, sometimes there are "teeth" 

 on one margin only, or a few weak teeth" arc present at the 

 base of the leaf-blade somewhat as in Wight's Icon. 2025 

 which is named F. gigantea, but may represent a different 

 species. The Calcutta plant appears to be represented at 

 Kew by a few young specimens, but at the stage reached it is 

 not easy to distinguish the true gigantea from the form de- 

 scribed by Baker at 0543 Bot. Mag. as F. cubensis, Haw. var. 

 inermis, which seems to be very like Redoute's picture in the 

 Plantes Grasses of F. gigantea, repeated in Tussac's Flore des 

 Antilles, as already stated, for what was really F. tuberosa, 

 and again by Trattinick with a translation from the descrip- 

 tion in the ''Liliacees" of the true gigantea. 



The living plants of F. cubensis at Kew are rather young 

 for satisfactory determination, but in the Herbarium there 

 are specimens which the writer takes to represent the gen- 

 uine Agave cubensis of Jacquin, notably no. 3250 of C. 

 Wright's Plantae Cubenses. In this form the perianth^ is 

 smaller and the germen shorter than in F. gigantea, agreeing 

 with a sheet of A. cubensis from Jacquin's herbarium at the 

 British Museum which consists unfortunately of a solitary 

 flower, and with the dissection given at fig. 28, tab. clxxv. 

 Sel. Stirp. Amer. (descr. at p. 100) ; the leaf is more gradually 

 constricted above the base than in gigantea, and the margin 

 prickles are more regularly set, and proportionally smaller 

 than in tuberosa; they are slighter and less uncinate than in 

 F. Selloa, to which, rather than to F. cubensis, we should 

 probably refer F. Lindeni, if indeed this should not be looked 

 on as a valid species. F. cubensis seems to be restricted to 

 Cuba, in the islands at all events. 



We have seen that Alton's ''tuberosa spinis duplicibus" 

 was in all likelihood the equivalent of Tussac's plant from 

 S. Domingo, but the Kew variety with simple spines remains 

 to be accounted for. 



In the Gardeners' Chronicle n. s. xi. (1879) p. 624, Mr. 



