346 



c;y^/a/« which included furtherthe very different New Mexican species 

 that Engelmann subsequently named A. Parryi, and seems to 

 have been described from still another form the close relationship 

 of which to the amoena form of pofafonoii or VerscliafeUii is 

 recognized by Jacobi. 



Fortunately some light is thrown on A. Mescal by material 

 still extant. in the herbarium of the Berlin Garden, through the 

 courtesy of Dr. Engler, I have been able to examine and copy 

 a photograph, evidently of Koch's time, which represents a well 

 developed plant and is labeled „Agave creimfa, sin. A. Mescal.^ 

 This photograph shows the irregulär marginal toothing noted by 

 Koch for his Mescal^ and also brings out an undescribed but 

 characteristic feature of the broadly oblanceolate recurving leaves, 

 which in their widest part are seen to have the margins sufficiently 

 revolute to make them convex on the upper surface. 



At Kew is now cultivated a plant under the name A. scolymus 

 croidta, apparently perpetuating in varietal position the specific name 

 given by Jacobi. The leaves of this are somewhat narrower and 

 more gradually acute than in the Berlin photograph, and the largest 

 of the red-brown prickles are connected by a very narrow similarly 

 colored dry border on which stand numerous other unequal but 

 mostly very small prickles. This again, notwithstanding its papery 

 leaf margin, appears to represent cvenaUi as understood byKoch, 

 and to be his A. Mescal, though it is neither of the two other plants 

 called crmafa by Jacobi. 



The species of his own naming that 

 Jacobi should really have conected A. Mescal 

 with, appears to be .1. Hookerl, his de- 

 scription of which, though from a larger 

 plant, passably well fits the Berlin photo- 

 graph, and this itself well pictures Hool-erl 

 as now grown at Kew. 



There is also grown at Kew now a 

 good specimen under the name^l. anicrinma 

 striata which presents the specific characters 

 of A. Mescal, but the leaves of which are 

 marked by heavy irregulär broken yellowish 

 lines sometimes confluent into longitudinal 

 A. iiootccrt. median stripes which, except for the inter- 



vening lines of green, occupy all but a relatively narrow margin 



