Description originale : Pancratium guianense. Cayenne Sea-Daffodil. [...]
P. guianense, sessili-multiflorum; foliis longè petiolatis ovali-oblongis, abruptè acuminatis; spatha valvis 4 deussato-oppositis erectis; tubo plurimum longiore limbo, oronâ angustâ 4-plo breviore laciniis linearibus, repando-sinuata sinubus integerrimis.
Pancratium. Exemplar in Herb. Banks. bulbo Guianâ allato et paucis abhinc annis Horto Kewensi floridos decerptum. [...]
A species, which while only known to us through the specimen in the Banksian Herbarium, we had set down in a review of this genus, in the Journal of Science and the Arts [J. Sci. Arts, 3:
325. 1817], for the same as the
undulatum of Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland, a secies known to us solely by description from the dried subject. But the comparison of our plant in a fresh state with this description, has induced us to separate the two, though manifestly very near akin. The crown in undulatum is described with a tooth in each interstamineous sinus, here each sinus is quite entire and even; the limb is there so far undulated or curled as to have suggested the specific name, but is clearly not so here; the leaves are there of the dimensions of 6 inches in length and 4 in breadth, affording very different proportions to those found in the leaves of the present plant, where they are about 8 inches in length, and scarcely 3 in breadth. Both however have this peculiarity in common, viz. that the dried foliage bears a great resemblance to that of
Hemerocallis japonica, not merely in point of contour, but also in the appearance of the nerves which are barred or latticed: a character hardly to be perceived in the fresh state in this species, nor probably in the other.
The plant now represented is the produce of seed received by Mr. Lambert from Demerara; was reared in his hothouse at Boyton, and blossomed in November. The specimen in the Banksian Herbarium (unquestionably of the same species) had been obtained from a bulb that flowered several years ago at Kew; and which came out of a vessel captured in the late war, having on board a collection of plants of Cayenne for the Botanic Garden at Paris. [...]
