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A SYNOPSIS OF THE GENUS .ECHMEA, R. & P. 



By J. G. Baker, F.R.S. 



Although BromeliacecB are so much cultivated, there is no order 

 of Endogens that has been so much neglected by botanists. 

 Although the order is comparatively small, we have in the London 

 herbaria a great many that have never been named nor described. 

 There is no recent synopsis of the genera, and a considerable 

 number have been founded of late years in the horticultural journals 

 and elsewhere upon one or two species alone. In di-awing up 

 lately for the annual rej)ort a catalogue of the BromeUacea culti- 

 vated at Kew, which are about one hundi-ed and fifty m number, 

 it became a question for consideration, both as regards the 

 catalogue and the labelling of the living plants in the houses, 

 which genera should be adopted. As in the suborder with an 

 inferior ovary and indehiscent fruit, to which the great majority 

 of the more showy species suitable for cultivation belong, doubts 

 on this head had regard mainly to the limits to be assigned to the 

 genus ^Echmea, founded by Ruiz and Pavon in 1794, — of which the 

 type of the original species exists in an excellent state of preser- 

 vation at the British Museum — I have thought it best to define 

 the genus in the sense in which I have understood it in the Kew 

 catalogue, and at the same time to attempt a classification and 

 synoptical description of the species that range under it, of which 

 we have any definite knowledge in England. As will be seen, 

 a good many of these are now described for the first time from 

 specimens in the London herbaria — one of them, even, from that 

 of Linnaeus. The species mount up to nearly sixty, so that with 

 the exception of Tilhmdsia, yEchmea is the largest genus in the 

 Natural Order. There are several other species known by garden 

 names, but these remain to be verified as to genus, and described 

 by some competent botanist who gets an opportunity of seeing 

 them in a flowering state. 



^CHMEA, Ruiz d Pavon, Fl. Peruv. et Chil. 47, t. 8. — Calyx 

 superior, coriaceous, the three subequal lanceolate or deltoid 

 segments usually free down to the top of the ovary and furnished 

 with a spiny mucro. Petals three, Ungulate, obtuse or cuspidate, 

 free down to the base, generally not more than two or three times 

 as long as the sepals, and furnished with a couple of minute scales 

 near the base. Stamens six, always shorter than the petals, 

 three inserted at the top of the ovary and three at the base of petals 

 between the scales ; filaments short, filiform or a little flattened ; 

 anthers linear-oblong, versatile. Ovary quite inferior, three-celled ; 



N. s. VOL. 8. [May, 1879.] s 



