﻿LITERATURE OF FURCRAEA WITH SYNOPSIS OF SPECIES. 49 



The next question is whether the plant of Salm-Dyck was 

 that described in the " AmarylUdeae " p. 200 (1888) by Baker. 

 The descriptions do not altogether tally, and there is no spec- 

 imen of the leaf in the Kew Herbarium; so far as the text 

 goes, the plant of the ''AmarylUdeae" might be true gigantea, 

 Vent., but perhaps we should find it rather in the cuhen- 

 sis var. inermis" of Bot. Mag. 6543 (1881). There are flowers 

 in the Herbarium on which Mr. Baker has written, "F. Com- 

 melynii Hort. Kew. Sept. 1874 is F. gigantea small variety, " 

 and these correspond to flowers belonging to a spray from a 

 Furcraea which poled in the garden during 1859-60 while 

 they differ somewhat from all those examples which the 

 writer has been able to refer to gigantea, tuherosa or cubensis. 

 The plant which flowered in 1859 was attributed in the first 

 instance to F. gigantea, but a later hand has substituted ''F. 

 flavoviridis,'^ from misapprehension possibly of a passage 

 under Bot. Mag. 5163, where Sir W. Hooker remarks that 

 " flavoviridis" might have been referred, but for the absence 

 of a "tuberous" stem, to F. tuherosa and adds "We have 

 plants that have not yet flowered which . . . better 

 correspond with F. tuherosa and I am bound to consider a 

 new species, which Mr. Repper sent, twelve or fourteen years 

 ago, . . . from Real del Monte. It may be considered a F. 

 gigantea in miniature ; the flowers however being quite as 

 large and of the same structure as F. gigantea already given 

 in Bot. Mag. tab. 2250, " 



The concluding sentence manifestly refers to F. flavoviridis, 

 though the flowers in the figure are about twice the size of 

 those of F. gigantea, corresponding to examples, probably 

 abnormal, that exist in the Herbarium; but one way or an- 

 other it is evident that the Furcraea of Bot. Mag. 5103 has 

 been more or less confused with the plant that flowered in 

 1859, which the writer thinks must have been the same as 

 Bot. Mag. 6543 {"F. cuhensis var. inermis"). 



It seems further possible that "inermis" is the plant fig- 

 ured by Redoute for the Plantes Grasses and Tussac's Flore 

 des Antilles as F. gigantea. Although superficially resem- 

 bling gigantea, the plant of Bot. Mag. 6543 will in all hkelihood 



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