ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 349 



rate drawings in Adrien de Jussieu's Cours de Botanique, pp. 77-79, 

 fig, 105-108.) 



( 26 )p. 243." The form of Aloes." 



To this group of plants, characterized by so great a similarity of 

 physiognomy, belong : Yucca aloifolia, which extends as far north 

 as Florida and South Carolina; Y. angustifolia (Nutt.), which ad- 

 vances as far as the banks of the Missouri ; Aletris arborea ; the 

 Dragon-tree of the Canaries and two other Draecaenas from New 

 Zealand; arborescent Euphorbias; Aloe dichotoma (Linn.) (form- 

 erly the genus Rhipidodendrum of Willdenow); and the cele- 

 brated Koker-boom of Southern Africa, with a trunk twenty-one 

 feet high and above four feet thick, and a top of 400 (426 English) 

 feet in circumference. (Patterson, Reisen in das Land der Hotten- 

 totten und der Kaffern, 1790, s. 55.) The forms which I have thus 

 brought together belong to very x different families : to the Liliaceae, 

 Asphodeleae, Pandaneae, Amaryllideae, and Euphorbiaceae ; all, how- 

 ever, with the exception of the last, belonging to the great division 

 of the Monocotyledones. A Pandanea, Phytelephas macrocarpa 

 (Ruiz), which we found in New Granada on the banks of the Mag- 

 dalena, with its pinnated leaves, quite resembles in appearance a 

 small palm-tree. This Phytelephas, of which the Indian name is 

 Tagua, is besides, as Kunth remarks, the only one of the Pandaneae 

 found (according to our present knowledge) in the New Continent. 

 The singular Agave-like and at the same time very tall-stemmed 

 Doryanthes excelsa of New South Wales, which was first described 

 by the acutely observing Correa de Serra, is an Amaryllidea, like 

 our low-growing Narcissuses and Jonquils. 



In the Candelabra shape of plants of the Aloe form, we must not 

 confound the branches of an arborescent stem with flower-stalks. It 

 is the latter which in the American Aloe (Agave Americana, Maguey 

 de Cocuyza, which is entirely wanting in Chili) as well as in the 

 Yucca acaulis (Maguey de Cocuy) presents in the rapid and gigantic 

 development of the inflorescence, a candelabrum-like arrangement of 

 the flowers which, as is well known, is but too transient a phenom- 

 enon. In some arborescent Euphorbias, on the other hand, the 

 physiognomic effect is given by the branches and their division, or 

 30 



