Variegation in the Agaveae 



by 



William Trelease (Missouri Bot. Garden). 



Mit Tafel VI -XII und 11 Textfiguren. 

 Eingelangt am 28, September 1907. 



Introductory. 



As a rule, botanists have taken little interest in variegated 

 plants, regarding them as horticultural curiosities rather than com- 

 ponents of the Vegetable Kingdom, The result is that they find 

 scant mention in botanicai literature where they are usually uncri- 

 tically disposed of in the fewest possible words when they receive 

 any notice at all, On the other hand, horticultural writers, when 

 such plants possess commerclal value, are likely either to record 

 facts or express opinions without adding descriptions by which 

 others may recognize them, or to characterize them as species, at 

 once emphasizing the abnormality to which their decorative value 

 is due and ignoring, failing to grasp, or stating with loose inaccu- 

 racy their normal differentials. 



Concerning some of them, practically nothing has been printed 

 aside from a record of the names under which they have received 

 exhibition awards, or the offer of specimens in the catalogues of 

 dealers, The more populär or easily multiplied kinds are well known 

 in collections and usually have been more written about than the 

 rarer or less sought forms, knowledge of which has sometimes 

 rested with the introducer and the few gardeners or amateurs who 

 have had the good fortune to see them at exhibitions or in private 

 collections where they have remained all but unique. 



The purpose here is to enumerate the variegated forms of 

 Afjave and Fuvcraea that the writer has seen or found mentioned 

 in print; to attempt such arrangement of their synonymy as is 

 possible; to give an account of a median-striped form of a species 

 not hitherto reported as variegated; and to indicate the nature and 



