ae GENERA “ALOE AND. MESEMBRYAN- 
THEME 
AS REPRESENTED IN THUNBERG’S HERBARIUM. 
By N. E. Brown. 
ALOE. 
TEE Kew Herbarium having acquired, through the courtesy of Professor HO: Juel, 
Director of Upsala Botanic Garden, the loan of the type specimens of the genera Aloe and 
Mesembr yanthemum collected in South Africa by Thunberg, I have had the opportunity 
to carefully examine and compare them with the material at Kew, and have thought it 
would be useful to future workers upon these genera to give an account of the aes 
and my identifications of them. — 
. During my long career at Kew I have on several previous occasions had fe privilege 
of being able to examine Thunberg’s types of various orders and genera, and in all cases 
have made notes of my comparisons upon the sheets in the Kew Herbarium. Im all the 
genera that I have previously examined Thunberg’s material has usually been quite 
satisfactory and often excellent, but in the genus Aloe this is unfortunately not the case, 
for the specimens of most of the species consist of detached leaves and flower-stems, and 
in some instances the leaves and flowers of what are supposed to represent one species 
belong to two different species- or even different genera. This is so unlike the usual 
excellence of Thunberg’s specimens that it must be attributed to the succulent nature and 
often large size of the plants and the difficulty Thunberg must have had in properly making 
good, dried specimens of them while travelling as he did at that date. It seems evident 
that his specimens of detached leaves and flowers must have become mixed in the press, 
and that he sometimes forgot which leaves belonged to the flowers; hence, the mixture. 
As I have very rarely found a locality written upon the sheet containing the specimen, 
Thunberg must have had some separate notes connecting the localities, as given in his 
* Flora Capensis,” ed. Schultes, with the specimens. 
From Professor Juel’s account of Thunbere’s Herbarium, it aul appear that 
Thunberg brought his collection, or some part of it, to Europe mounted upon small sheets 
of thin paper, and remounted them on larger sheets of thicker paper after his return to 
Sweden. In doing this it is quite possible that some of the mixtures of species may have 
been made. 
In the account of them which ee the species have been arranged alphabetically 
under the names that Thunberg used in his `` Flora Capensis,” ed. Schultes, for convenience 
of reference ; and for the sake of brevity I have quoted this work throughout as Thunb., 
ee Cap.” 
Pe ALOE, LINN. 
A. arachnoides, Thunb., ‘“ Diss. Aloe,” p. 7 (1785), and “ Fl. Cap.,” p. 311. 
The specimen consists of three tufts of leaves and three racemes a flowers ; all of 
the latter, I believe, are detached, but have been inserted among the leaves, and only that 
of the middle specimen can belong, as the other two flower-stems certainly belong, to a 
