AGAVE IN THE WEST INDIES. 
By Witt1am TRELEASE. 
ANALYSIS. 
Conspicuous and strikingly dissimilar to anything then known in Europe, the American 
aloes, as they have come to be called, must have attracted the attention of Columbus and his 
companions, when, in the Bahamas and Antilles, they discovered the New World in the autumn 
of 1492. It appears to have been use rather than form, however, which first excited comment, 
and the earliest written mention of them is found in Chanca’s account ? of the aloes of Haiti 
(1493) and Oviedo’s (1535)? commentary on the maguei of Haiti and the Arayan mainland. 
As plants, the West Indian agaves were first described and pictured in Munting’s Aloe 
americana minor (1680) (pl. A) ascribed by Boerhaave to Curagao, Hermann’s Aloe americana 
sobolifera (1687) (pl. 44) from Jamaica, and Dillenius’s Aloe barbadensis, etc. (1732) (pl. 34) 
from Barbados. Their nomenclature under Agave, apart from deviations in spelling, comprises 
A. viviparA (1753), A. Karatto (1768), A. americana (1774), A. spicata (1802), A. ANTILLARUM 
(1827), A. soBoLIFERA (1834), A. Offoyana (1864), A. LEGRELLIANA (1866), A. coccinea (1876), 
A. CARIBAEA (1877), A. Morrisi (1887), A. polyacantha (1888), A. mexicana (1889), A. RIGIDA 
(1890), A. Witipiner (1891), A. dominicensis (1893), and A. Wieuti (1907), the date in each 
case marking the first connection of the name with an Antillean plant. The five names in 
italics properly belong to continental species that do not enter into the West Indian flora; 
those in lower case Roman type are synonyms of two of the remaining 10 species which, under 
these or different names, belong to that flora. A. spicata, described at Madrid from a plant 
supposedly native at Havana, is now regarded as of continental origin and has no close allies 
in the West Indies. 
Until within recent years herbarium material of Agave, and especially of its West Indian 
representatives, has been both scanty and questionable. My attention was diverted from a 
general study of the genus in 1905 by the receipt of specimens of a strikingly xerophytic new 
form (pls. 101-103) collected on Inagua by Mr. George V. Nash of the New York Botanical 
Garden, and no small part of the time that could be given to the genus for the past five years 
has gone to an examination of its West Indian representatives, of which extensive collections 
brought together by the several energetic collectors of the New York Botanical Garden have 
been supplemented by specimens contributed by correspondents resident or traveling in the 
archipelago and by my own gleanings during one field trip on which nine of the islands were 
visited. To the collectors who are mentioned in connection with the specimens cited, and espe- 
cially to Professor N. L. Britton and his associates, is due the possibility of bringing together 
the following synopsis of species. In this, gaps still remain to be filled and errors of judgment 
doubtless occur, but otherwise it is believed to contain a fairly complete presentation of the 
West Indian agaves, except that the large and little-explored islands of Cuba and especially 
Haiti may be expected to yield additional species of their characteristic groups, and collections 
are still to be seen from several minor islands. 
The plants occur more or less locally on the several islands and usually affect rocky places 
or arid exposures (pls. 4, 9, 84, 95, 101), sometimes in association with cacti (pl. 74). Appar- 

1 Presented in abstract before the National Academy of Sciences, Nov. 8, 1910; analysis of geographical distribution and probable mode 
of introduction previously communicated to the National Academy of Sciences, Apr. 19, 1910, and to the Academy of Sciences of St. Louis, May 
16, 1910. 
2 See Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 48, 1907, p. 455. 
3 See Rept. Missouri Bot. Gard., vol. 18, 1907, p. 32. 5 
