I9I0.] TRELEASE— SPECIES IN AGAVE. 233 



To this circumstance is attributable the fact that many species of 

 this kind of plants have been described from garden specimens 

 which have disappeared sometimes almost before the ink was dry 

 on their descriptions, and that these have been drawn in many 

 instances necessarily from easily transported rather than repre- 

 sentative material. Very naturally, too, garden plants claiming 

 specific recognition in a study of this kind have been accounted for 

 though absolutely nothing was known of their source or origin ; and 

 descriptions are sometimes not free from at least the suspicion of 

 being based on foliage of one species — possibly warped in character 

 to ease its assimilation with an earlier description, flowers of a 

 second, and possibly fruit of a third, — superadded in a laudable 

 effort to complete the original account of a vegetating type, itself 

 long lost. 



Agave stands well to the front among genera exemplifying these 

 difficulties, and it presents some that are almost its very own, 

 because of having enjoyed a marked if transient garden popularity 

 a little over a generation ago. Linngeus, in 1753, named only four 

 species, two of which are now accredited to other genera. Twenty- 

 five years ago, after excluding a large number of nominal species, 

 Mr. Baker admitted 127 true agaves; and more than 200 species, 

 of which many are nondescripts, must now be admitted to even a 

 conservative list. Over one third of those recognized by Mr. Baker 

 were based on vegetating plants — and on garden specimens at that ; 

 and most of the many others that he relegated to a synonymic place, 

 as well as those that he had to lay aside as unidentifiable, had been 

 described from garden plants, often of only a few years' growth. 



In a study of the genus to which I have been devoting such 

 time as could be spared for the last ten years, an effort has been 

 made at once to understand the spontaneous representation of this 

 genus — characteristic chiefly of the Mexican plateau, and to exhaust 

 all possibilities of identification with nominal garden species before 

 accepting as new to science even the most striking form met with 

 in nature. During the fad for cultivating agaves, beginning about 

 forty years ago, large prices were sometimes paid for good speci- 

 mens. Althous^h dealers and collectors never showed an undue zeal 



