— 4 
covered a greater development of the genus, and Prof. Torrey 1 :1 common wit I 
his Botany of that Boundary (published in 1859) was able■ toi^^ed by a nake( 
indicate five other species; his account, however, owing tpjHi p borizontaliy-fl 
insufficiency of material, is meagre and to some extent erroneous, fcy as being ( 
As far as I am informed, nothing has been added to our knowlHin the true Amarvl 
edge of these plants in the sixteen years elapsed since his publi- rmbno which dia< r ( 
cation; but in the last few years a quantity of new material has hi, Other interest 
been gathered, and, being placed at my disposal^ has enabled m;e . f the Agave# 
to make a more thorough study of the genus. 
The Agaves are American plants, some of which became 
known to Europeans since the discovery of America, and esffi||' ma|Q11 ty *be Ag 
cially since the conquest of Mexico : the great Agave Americana 1 s:i - lterra nean tru 
is .said to have been already in cultivation in Europe as'early as 1>eilou oh t° evolve 
the year 1561 ; from the similarity of the spinous leaves they were 11 ^^ 3 a ^ ter bearing 
■ considered forms of the Aloes of the old word, and the nain|®fleshy, wh 
^ Aioe” has in popular language stuck to them to this, day 3 ' ower part, while i 
Linnaeus was the first to distinguish them, and in his Hortur ts awa )’. This is 
Upsalensis (1748), p: 87, he established the genus Agtrn^ an ("%ves have persist 
.enumerated the characters by which “these American,plants” ar si0a s; Reproduce 
readily known from the true “Asiatic and African AloeJM H “Was do, from axilla 
adds that he has “ named them Agave, because that worfflind ,n axis has fulfilled : 
-cates something grand and admirable.” It is interesting l ies are initiated bv 
observe how even at that early date, when botanical geogr;apb : leaves, which 
'was not yet born, the geographical domains of these differ ^i^erblaetter)^ 
groups of plants struck the discriminating mind of L|fina&(is Jacobi j 
something remarkable and characteristic. 
The Agaves were first recognized as a distinct tribe^by R.. , *^ escen t Agaves 
Salisbury,* who united in his 12th order of Sarmentacece Yuc !ln ,,f eater P a rt; but 
. • 
(with a “pericarpium superum”) and Agave, Polyanthe| 
others (with a “pericarpium inferum”), thus recognizing t ]( ,^ lnier ° Us offshoc 
great resemblance of these plants, which we now place in diff,^^ ls P ro pagate tl 
ent but parallel families, just on account of the relation of■ t-.,. C ^ atera l buds, 
ovarv to the other parts of the-flower.^ P ai *°f the old trn 
Other botanists7 have appended them to the Amarylli s m, e d , t 
ceoe, but it must be confessed that they have only th,JBg|d^ are c ^e. 
Endlicher, gen., p. 181; Kunth, Enum. 5, p. 81S. 
In Agave the ovary is truly and entirely infer 
ivs a partly (about %) superior ovary. 
lied Palya^^j, he 
