Luculia gratissima (new photo)

Here is a photograph from November 2004. The same bush fro the earlier posting. In fact this is the last and only bush left growing at Monserrate. Unfortunately comparison between postings will show a marked decline in vigour. Less light due to overhead competition is most likely the cause.

Castalides

Monserrate - Music Room

Castalides, Aonides, Heliconides, Pegasides, and Phebiades: these are names derived from places haunted by the muses. There is a fountain called Castalia, at the foot of Mount Parnassus. The Castalides are the nymphs that inhabit this fountain. Not one of the nine muses, the name is generally applied to all of them.

The fountain of Castalia was sacred to Apollo. Castalia was a nymph who threw herself down a well to escape his amorous advances. The Pythian priestesses bathed in the waters of this spring, before delivering their oracles of the god.

In the Music room at Monserrate there were 16 spandrels to be filled with medallions and busts; so a few extras were needed. The use of these general names seems to imply that at Monserrate there were many muses, not just the famous nine. The muses were nymphs that inhabited springs and fountains, and each part of the garden has its own denizen.

There are no attributes shown with this figure.

Furcraea bedinghausii

Monserrate

This is a most distinctive plant, with a long and most confusing history. It has been grown at Monserrate since the earliest days of Francis Cook, firstly as a Yucca, then a Roezlia, and finally as a Furcraea bedinghausii. Finally that is, until sr. Gárcia-Mendoza made his revision of the genus in 2000. We must now learn to call it Furcraea parmentieri.

Long-lived and prolific, it is found all over Sintra. Monocarpic and spectacular in its floral demise, thousands of plantlets are produced, each capable of generating a new plant with the greatest of ease. Many thousands must have been slipped into pockets and transported to new homes by generations of Sintra tourists. Lazy gardeners, tired of novelty, have reproduced them prodigiously. All of that is fine. The effect is extremely handsome.

A decade is nothing to these plants. They grow slowly to achieve considerable bulk. Trunks three or four metres high with crowns almost 2 metres in diametre. After ten or twenty, or more years, they will throw up an extravagant flowerspike - often five metres above trunk height. Millions of creamy white lilies are hung from this great scaffold. A few will produce seed pods, but the rest sprout viviparous shoots that turn into bulblets. Some winters, especially cold and wet ones, will produce a flowering bonanza, the giants commiting collective suicide, leaving behind a population of dwarfs to take their place.

The Magazine of Horticulture, Botany and Rural affairs, 1860, gave notice of the introduction of Yucca parmentieri to English collections. Most likely, it came over to Portugal shortly afterwards. They have been grown with great success at Tresco since 1894 (Will Giles). In 1900 it was described in the catalogue of the Southern California Acclimatizing Association, of Santa Barbara. No doubt it had reached these parts long before. The nomenclature was already confused: "Yucca Parmentieri and other names; one of the most striking and majestic decorative plants; a very rapid grower: builds a stout trunk 15 feet high"

La Belgique horticole, journal des jardins et des vergers

1863, volume 13. Lithograph by L. Severeyns-Michel

Megarosettes of Furcraea bedinghausii indicate a vegetation type restricted to the rolling, dissected, rocky lower slopes of a few volcanoes in central México, such as Pelado (3090-3340m) and Tláloc. Soils are shallow, gravely, loamy clays (pH 5.0 – 6.5). Half-meter-high monocaulescent agavaceous megarosettes of the endemic Furcraea bedinghausii characterize this community. The maximum height ever measured for Furcraea is 5.3m. A floristically rich but relatively open herb layer is common. Other characteristic species include Senecio angulifolius, Stipa ichu, Symphoricarpos microphyllus, Conyza schiedeana, Muhlenbergia macroura, M. dentate, Geranium potentillaefolium, Gnaphalium oxyphyllum, Alchemilla procumbens, Sibthorpia repens, and Festuca amplissima.

Barbour & Billings, North American Terrestial Vegetation, p. 584

Related species: Furcraea longaeva Karw. & Zucc.
Type-Locality: Crescit in summo monte Tanga, provinciae Oaxaca, 10000 pedes supra Oceanum in declivibus Quercubus et Arbutis cositis., may 1829
Collector and Number: W.F. Karwinsky s.n.
Distribution: Mexico (Oaxaca); Guatemala

Coastal slopes, Oak-woodland with Arbutus. Once again sounds like Sintra.


Furcraea parmentieri – Amaryllidaceae

Furcraea parmentieri (Roezl ex Ortgies) García-Mend.
García-Mendoza, A. 2000. Revisión taxonómica de las especies arborescentes de Furcraea (Agavaceae) en México y Guatemala. Bol. Soc. Bot. México 66: 113–129.
Furcraea longaeva subsp. bedinghausii (K. Koch) B. Ullrich (Cactaceas y suculentas mexicanas 36(2): 35. 1991)
Furcraea bedinghausii K. Koch (Wochenscrift des Vereines zur Befördung des Gärtenbaues in den Königl. Preussischen Staaten für Gärtnerei und Pflanzenkunde 6(30): 233. 1863.) Type : Morren, Belgique Hort. 13(11): 327, t. (1863)
Yucca parmentieri Roezl ex Ortgies Gartenflora 8(9): 278. 1859.

Extensive list of synonyms identified by García-Mendoza, A. 2000
Agave argyrophylla K. Koch ; Agave toneliana (K. Koch) E. Morren
Beschorneria floribunda K. Koch ; Beschorneria multiflora K. Koch
Furcraea bedinghausii K. Koch ; Furcraea roezlii André
Lilium regium Trel.
Roezlia bulbifera Roezl ; Roezlia regia Lem. ; Roezlia regina Trel.
Yucca argyraea Trel.; Yucca argyrophylla (K. Koch) Lem. ; Yucca parmentieri Roezl ex Ortgies ;
Yucca pringlei Greenm. ; Yucca toneliana K. Koch

Egeria

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanged cover,
Egeria!

Byron Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Canto the Fourth CXVIII


Egeria's fountain : central spot
Of this our shining temple --- hewed
Its reservoir from fragment rude,
Of Cintra's solid marble, led
From Serra's steep, its rocky bed ;
And raised within its circle wide,
On structure, rich Carrara's spoil,
Ruling the splashing water's moil,
Behold the fabled Nymph descried.

Thomas Cargill
Fairylife in Fairyland

Goethe's sketch of Egeria Grotto in Rome

Egeria

The watery nymph has flowed away. The central spot of this shining temple stands forlorn.

Egeria's fountain marks the crossing of Monserrate's central corridor and the North and South Porticos. The statue is gone, but there remains a fine plinth and basin as decribed by Cargill. The white marble statue of a young woman bathing stood about 80 cm high.

Similar statue auctioned at Christies: A fine Italian marble figure of the water nymph Egeria By Giulio Monteverde, Rome, Dated 1874 The naturalistic base signed and dated to the back Monteverde/Roma/1874, on circular stepped partial pedestal with octagonal base.

From Cargill's poem we learn not only the subject of the fountain, but also that the basin, carved with an ivy motif was made locally, and that the pedastal is of Italian manufacture.

Egeria was a water nymph, sometimes ranked as the goddess of fountains.

Terpsichore

Monserrate - Music Room

She shall have music where ever she goes. Third of our musical muses Terpsichore is the muse of song and dance. More properly choral song, never a problem with so many sisters. The attributes shown here a tambourine and a set of pan pipes. She wears the poets' laurel.

Euterpe

Monserrate - Music Room

With flowers in her hair, Euterpe is the bringer of joy, muse of lyric poetry and music. At Monserrate she is placed right next to Cecelia, patron saint of music, and to her left is Terpsichore, muse of song and dance. Her attributes are musical instruments, here the oboe, horn and trumpet. The chaplet in her hair is curious since it contains as well as flowers, bunches of grapes and ears of corn, traditionally used to identify the seasons, or abundance, Flora or Ceres, here perhaps they signify abundant joy.

Classical portraits always show the double flute.

Euterpe from Ovid's Metamorphoses 1563 edition

by the Neurenberg woodcutter and engraver Virgil Solis.

Senecio mikanioides

Bom Jesus de Braga

A weedy plant that is often classified as invasive. (In Madeira, it is a decided nuisance, but less of a problem in dryer climates.) Relegated from the garden, it is to be found climbing rusty chain-link fences or on rubbish heaps. Nevertheless this little vine lights up many a dull November day. It is not as refined a plant as the related Senecio tamoides - the differences are that mikanioides has more weedy (cucurbit-like) foliage and the flowers are more of a groundsel - somehow it still has its charm. Here as photographed this week at Bom Jesus it is concealing some abhorrant barbed wire!

It is highly recommended by the Belgian L'illustration horticole Vol I 1854, under the name Delairea odorata (recently resurrected see below). "Trop rare dans les jardins" ! Delaire was the head gardener at the Jardin Botanique d'Orléans. It was illustrated in Vol 6 of Horticulteur Universal (Mai 1844). Described as "une plant fort désirable, en raison de son pittoresque port, de son curieux foliage, de ses nombreuses panicles de petites fleurs jaunes, dont l'arôme rappèle tout-à-fait celui de l'Heliotrope du Pérou." Recommended for cold greenhouses, to climb pillars or decorate hanging baskets. Flowering abundantly througfh the winter. Needs frost free conditions, indifferent to soil.

Native of Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.

The lady behind, bearing a sturdy-hulled ship, represents Confidence. But that is another story.

Of course as with most Senecios we should again now use the old name (since 2006)

Delairea odorata Lem. Flora of North America Editorial Committee, eds. 2006. Magnoliophyta: Asteridae, part 7: Asteraceae, part 2. Fl. N. Amer. 20: i–xxii + 1–666.


Senecio mikanioides Otto ex Walp. Allgemeine Gartenzeitung 13(6): 42. 1845.
Cacalia scandens
Cacalia bryonoides - the foliage is indeed just like bryony
Mikania senecionides
Bryonia palmata - a name used in French nurseries
Ipomaea hederacea - a name used in German nurseries - hence the totally inappropriate common name "German Ivy"!