132 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



of the Republic, West of British Honduras, is unex- 

 plored ; the prospect, nevertheless, is that the total num- 

 ber of agaves indigenous to Guatemala will scarcely be 

 found to double the number now reported. For the 

 convenience of those whose interest includes the parks 

 or other public places of the capital or experimental 

 plantations of fiber plants, I have included in the fol- 

 lowing treatment the very few cultivated agaves that I 

 have seen in Guatemala. 



The most striking geographic fact revealed by what 

 are now known is undoubtedly that the spicate subgenus 

 of Agave, Littaea, does not appear to reach into Cen- 

 tral America any more than into the West Indies; — 

 though as Littaeas occur in the southern Cordillera of 

 Mexico there would be nothing surprising if some of 

 them were to be found in the Guatemalan continuation 

 of those mountains. 



The Furcraea records for Guatemala are scarcely 

 more convincing than the Agave records. F. longaeva, 

 the most remarkable representative of its genus if not 

 the most noteworthy lilioid plant, figures in one of the 

 vignettes of Bateman's superb work on orchids, 11 and 

 is said to have been seen by Skinner in the high moun- 

 tains of that country. There is no improbability in this, 

 since its type locality is the cordillera of Oaxaca in ad- 

 jacent Mexico in which region it has been recollected 

 recently. 12 At first sight, F. Selloa seems to be even more 

 definitely fixed as Guatemalan, for its author, though 

 describing it from a specimen cultivated in Europe, 

 states that it was collected by von Warscewicz on the 

 volcano of Quassaltenango, Guatemala. 13 Of recent 

 years, that caulescent garden Furcraea that Mr. Baker 

 took for cubensis has generally been accepted as F. Sel- 

 loa; there is reason to believe that this comes from Co- 



11 Bateman, Orchid, of Mex. & Guatemala. Vignette to pi. 16. 1843. 



isPurpus, Moller's d. Gartn.-Zeit. 26: 10. /. 1-3. 1911. 



i •"• Koch, Wochenschr. Verein Beford. Gartenbau. 3:22. 1860. 



