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MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



Martha in Colombia by Purdic of which specimens are extant 

 in the Kew Herbarium. F. spinosa was grown by the Bo- 

 tanical Society of Florence under the wrong name of "Agave 

 virginica"; being thence transplanted in 1783, several plants 

 in different gardens flowered in 179G, 1799, and 1807, and 

 have been described by Targioni-Tozzetti who has identified 

 them with the "Agave" of Rodati's memoir above quoted 

 which is undated, but was published, from internal evidence, 

 after 1797. This might be the "tuberosa" of the Dyck gar- 

 den, or even possibly, though less probably, the stricta of 

 Jacobi; there remains " flavoviridis," but the probabilities 

 are all in favor of the Florence plant having been a form of 

 tuberosa, Ait. fil., in which case the Magdalena plant of Purdie 

 represents an undescribed species, unless as above said, it 

 should turn out after all to be the elegans of Todaro. Grise- 

 bach in the "Catalogus PI. Cub." duly recognized Wright's 

 no. 3250 as the true cubensis, but in the Flora of the British 

 West Indies (1864) he admitted only two West Indian species 

 VIZ." cubensis" and "gigantea"; to the former he attributed 

 "leaves linear lanceolate, coarsely spinosc-dentate/' which is 

 plainly meant for tuberosa, and yet cited "Jacquin Amer 

 Pict. t. 281 f. 25" which is, of course, the " ci7M/o-spinose " 

 Agave cubensis. This he gives as "naturalized in Jamaica" 

 citing Purdie, whose plant was collected, as we have just seen, 

 on the north coast of South America; if any doubt existed as 

 to the supposed Jamaican habitat it would be dissipated by 

 the sets at Kew, where one sheet of Purdie's Santa Martha 

 gathering is marked "F. cubensis" in the handwriting of 

 Grisebach. His "gigantea," so far as the Antilles are con- 

 cerned, was no doubt tuberosa, Ait. fil., for he cites Tussac 

 and, as the only example he had personally seen, gives a spec- 

 imen collected by Wullschlaegel in Antigua. It seems pos- 

 sible that Purdie's plant is the elegans of Todaro; and in that 

 case we should probably reduce tuberosa, Ait. fil., to spinosa, 

 Targioni-Tozzetti, on the one hand, and elegans of Todaro to 

 stricta Jacobi on the other, but see stricta. In any case until 

 the Furcraeas of South America have been further studied, 



