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The Spanish conquests in Central America were established 

 by the year 1525 and not long afterwards at least one species 

 of Agave had appeared in S. Europe. 



Charles de Lecluse (Clusius) while travelling in Spain 

 about the third quarter of the 16th century saw a plant 

 growing in a convent garden near Valentia, which he has 

 described as A loe americana (RaHorum Stirp. per Hisp. 1576; 

 also Ear. PI. Hist. Antwerp, 1601, p. 160), and identifies with 

 the Metl or Maguey of Gomara, whose account he incorporates. 

 De Lee I use took offsets from the convent specimen (which had 

 not yet flowered) and sent one of these to a friend's garden 

 in the Netherlands. M. Charles Martins (Bull. Soc. Bot. de 

 France, //., p. 9) notes that the woodcut in the Historia was 

 taken from the specimen that was sent to this friend and that 

 this subsequently flowered at Antwerp. This figure gives a 

 fair representation of an Agave of the type of Humboldt's 

 "americana." 



Almost simultaneously or a little later, Caesalpino saw an 

 Agave in flower in the garden of the Bishop Tornaboni, pro- 

 bably near Pisa, which is eloquently described in Cap. XXXI [ 

 of his " De Planfis " as " Alterum genus [viz. : Aloes] ex India 

 Occidentak advectum etc." 



Danielli says, with much justice, of the accounts which 

 occur from this period with increasing frequency of "Aloe 

 americana" having flowered at such and such a spot in 

 Europe, that it is impossible to say which of the species of 

 Agave (Sect. Bun gave) was seen by the observers; but 

 Caesalpino's excellent description suggests that the specimen he 

 saw was not A. americana of Linnaeus. 



Cortuso, Superintendent of the Botanic Garden at Padua, 

 had an Agave in cultivation before 1561, which is said to 

 have been the first introduced into Italy (not Europe, as by a 

 slip, often pointed out, was stated in the Species Plantarum). 



The story that the Agave first flowered in Europe at the papal cicy of 

 Avignon* in South-Eastern France in 1599, seems to rest upon a pious opinion, 

 of which the genesis can he divined by consulting the original authorities (for 

 references see Danielli, Lc , pp. 8485, and Ch. Martins, I.e., 9 to 11), 



* Danielli notes that the Agave was probably taken by Italians settled in 

 Avignon to that city from Tuscany. In a French work on the plants of the 

 Trianon garden it is said that " A. americana " was first brought to Paris from 

 the Mauritius in the 17th century. 



