'2522 



AUBOKETUM AND FIJ UTI CLTUJM. 



'Ain J 1 1. 



23yi 



tries, it is perfectly hardy in the climate of London. It v\as first cultivated in 

 England by Gerard, about 1592, who says : " This plant growetli in all the tract 

 of the Indies, from the Magcllane Straits unto the Capeof Florida, and in most 

 of the islands of the C'anibals, and others adjoining; from whence I had that 

 plant brought me that groweth in my garden, by a servant of a learned and skil- 

 ful apothecary of Excester named Mr. Thomas Edwards." Gerard supposed 

 that the cuzava, or Indian bread, was made from the root of this plant; but 

 his commentator, Johnson, says that this was " wherein he most shewed 

 his weaknesse, for that he doth confound it with the raanibot, or true yuicca." 

 Gerard also supposed that it was " a low herbe, consisting onely of leaves and 

 roots. It hath neither stalks," he says, " flowers, nor fruit, that I can under- 

 stand of others, or by experience of the plant itself, which hath grown in my 

 garden four yeares together, and yet doth grow ami [>rosper exceedingly." 

 On this passage Johnson observes, that Gerard's plant, " some few yeares after 

 he had set forth his worke, flowered in his garden ; " adding that he himself 

 once saw a yucca in flower '• in the garden of Mr. Wilniot, at Bow, but never 

 since, though it hath been kept for sundry yeares in many other gardens, as 

 with Mr. Parkinson and Mr. Tuggy." Respecting the plant in Gerard's gar- 

 den " at Holborne, in the suburbs of London," Parkinson, in his Paradisus, 

 p. 434., tells us that Gerard kept it till his death; after which " it perished 

 with him who got it from his widow, intending to send it to his country 

 house ;" adding that Gerard sent a sucker of it to Robin, gardener to 

 Henry IV. in Paris, which was the first seen in France. Michaux found it 

 growing on the sea shore in Carolina. The fibres of the leaves are used by 

 the Indians to make a kind of cloth, and also cords, which they use to fasten 



