﻿38 



MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



Thesaurus, etc.," 1654, p. 273) of Nequametl it is clear that 

 De Laet was in error, for that was probably an Agave of the 

 Littaea section, and in any case remote from the Tobago 

 species which, if anything, resembles Todaro's Furcraea 

 elegans. 



In his 1658 edition of Piso, Dc Laet gave in all five Cara- 

 guatas, viz : — 



(i) Caraguata a^anga which is Bromelia Pinguin, Linn.; 

 (ii) Caraguata guagu, by description evidently Marcgraf's 

 plant of the same name, which was a Bromeliad, but the cor- 

 responding figure is the Caraguata-gua^u of Piso (de Medi- 

 cinis) i. e. a, Furcraea; (iii) the ''Erva babosa" of the Portu- 

 guese and a true Aloe; (v) by the description should be a 

 Karatas of the Nidularium group in that genus; while (iv) re- 

 produced Marcgraf's figure of his original Caraguata-gua§u, 

 with a brief description differing from Marcgraf's which, as 

 just seen, had been transferred to Piso's Caraguata guagu. 

 It is not easy to trace the original Caraguata guaeu (i. e. 

 Marcgraf's) but it may refer to the Tillandsia augusta of Vel- 

 loso (Fl. Plum. iii. t. 135, 1827) cited doubtfully by Martins 

 (Fl. Bras. iii. pt. iii. pp. 568-569, tab. 105) for his Vriesia 

 imperialis, E. Morr. ined., and identified by Baker (Journ. 

 Bot. 1879, p. 162) with his own Aechmea augusta, which, how- 

 ever, seems to be a separate though perhaps closely aUicd 

 form (c/. also Gaudichaud, \oy. Bonite, 63). 



Linnaeus, in the Hortus Cliffortianus (1737), p. 130, cited 

 "Marcgraf, Bras. 87" for his ''Aloe foliis lanccolatis dentatis 

 spinosis spina cartilaginea terminatis radieaUbus" which for 

 the rest is the Agave americana of the Spcci(>s Plantarum. 

 He was thinking possibly of Agave antillarum. 



Labat (Nouv. Voy. aux Islets, etc., 1724, pt. 4, chap. xvi. 

 p. 115) gives a long account of "Karatas," largely based, 

 though without acknowhxlgmrnt, on De Laet's description 

 of the Caraguata-gua^u, but the figure of Karatas (reduced 

 from Piso's Caraguata aranga) opposite p. 135 of the first part 

 is Bromelia Pi7iguin, Linn.; opposite p. 69, however, of part 

 4, there is an artistic roj-Toduction of De Laet's Tobago "Ne- 

 quametl " entitled Aloes ou espece de Karatas qui a fait son 



