﻿LITERATURE OF FURCRAEA WITH SYNOPSIS OF SPECIES. 47 



any actual Furcraea, but if he was acquainted with a Per- 

 nambuco species, known to the Indians as a ''Caroata", that 

 may very well have been Brotero's plant, and possibly the 

 same as Piso's original Caraguata-guagu (not Marcgraf's), 

 and also De Lact's Tobago drawing, which, taken with Jac- 

 quin's citation of ''Nequametl, Marcgraf," is no doubt re- 

 sponsible for the identification of Brotero's plant with Jac- 

 quin's. The proper citation, — if De Laet's sketch was to be 

 identified with Agave cuhensis, Jacquin, — would have been 

 ''Nequametl, De Laet, non Ximenes vel Hernandez in Rec- 

 chi," but in all probability De Laet's so-called Nequametl, 

 if the sketch be worth anything, was quite different from the 

 Cuban species (see also F. elegans above). 



F. AiTONi, Jacobi in Abhandl. Schles. Gesellsch. 1869, p. 174. 



The description of the leaf, as Dr. Trelease has observed, 

 recalls the F. gigantea of Bot. Mag. 2250, but Jacobi clearly 

 referred his Aitoni to the neighbourhood of undulata {i. e. the 

 ''Minores" of this paper). No trace exists at Kew, and un- 

 less there are authentic specimens on the continent of Europe, 

 F. Aitoni is never likely to be identified. 



F. ASPERA, M. J. Roemer Syn. iv. p. 293 (1847) = Agave as- 

 pera, Jacq. in Enum. Vindob. App. 307.* 

 Jacquin was careful to distinguish this from his "hexa- 

 petala" (Enum. Syst. Plant. 17G0, p. 18), which is Furcraea 

 cuhensis, Vent., and observed that in habit it was like a small 

 edition of Agave foetida, L., i. e. F. gigantea, Vent. ; the flowers 

 were altogether those of " hexapetala" : by this however he 

 did not mean to contrast them with those of F. gigantea, but 

 with the type of Agave as we now regard it in contradistinc- 



* In the same year that the second edition of the "Enum. syst. 

 stirpium quae in Ins. Carib, etc." issued, Jacquin published the "Enum. 

 stirp. picrarumque . . . in agro Vindobon. etc." with which there 

 were printed and continuously paged, under a common title page, "Ob- 

 servationum Centuria" (on certain plants of Mid-Europe), "Appendix de 

 paucis exoticis, ' ' and at the end copperplate engravings to illustrate the 

 " Observationum Centuria." Agave aspera is dealt with in the "Ap- 

 pendix." 



