SPECIES OF AETOCAEPUS
I N D I G E N O U S TO BLLITISH INDIA.
TEE genus Ariocarpus was first published by tlie brothers Forster in theii- Charaoteres
Generum Plantarum issued in 1776, Eind it was founded on the wBll-known Brend
fruit tree, wliicli these botanists named Ariocarpus communis. The elder Linnoeus, to
whom the authorship of the genus has by some authors been erroneously attributed,
nowhere describes it. In fact, its first appearance in any of the Linnoean writings is
in the Supplement to the SysUma, published in 1781 by the younger Linuieus, who,
adopting Forster's name for the genus, described the Bread-fruit as A. iitcisa and the
Jack as A. mtcgrifolia. Such striking trees as the Bread.fruit and the Jack had not
however, escaped the notice of other European botanists until so late as 1781 ; for we
find that in the very year of Forster's publication of Artocarpus, Tliunberg, under the
generic name of Radermachia, described, in the 36th volume of the Proceedings of the
StockMm Academy, the two species integrifoUa and incisa. Gairtner, in his treatise De
Frucliius et Seminis Plantarum, published in 1788, gave a description and figures of the
Jack under the genus Silodium (the authorship of which he attributes to Banks), and
with the specific name cauhrum. Lamarck, in the thir-d volume of the Enei/chpédie
Methodiqm, dated 1789, enumerates five spccies under the Fosterian generic name, viz.
A. incisa, Merofhylla, Jaca, PUlippcmis, and hinuta (the Ansjeli of Ebeede). Lastly, the
Abbé Loureir-o, who had been familiar in Cochin-China with the Jack as a tree cultivated
for its fruit, formed for it, in his Ilora Cochin-Chineusis, published in 1793, a genus
wbieb he called Polyfhcma. In this genus he included, besides the Jack {P. Jaca), an
indigenous species which he called P. Champedcn (^Ariocarpus Polyplima, Pers.).
By the pre-Linnoean writers the Bread-fruit and Jack had been described and
figured. Bumphius (Hort. Amboinensis) described various forms, of which these are
clearly two, under the general name of Soeeus. What tbe other species were, it is
difBcult to make out from the rude figures and descriptions of this writer, and the
enquiry would hardly repay the trouble. In Eheede's Hortus Malalaricns (vol. iii, p. 17,
tab. 26—28), A. integrifolia is described and figured under the name Tsjaeca Marum.
A«N. EOT. G-AEU. CALC. VOL. II.