THE YUCCEAE. 95- 
European gardens under the erroneous name Y. Califor- 
nica. 
I do not find herbarium material or published records 
showing the native home of Y. elephantipes, and though it 
is cultivated everywhere in the interior as a hedge or door- 
yard plant, it is not wild in Guatemala between Puerto 
Barrios and San José, nor in Honduras between Puerto 
Cortez and Santa Cruz de Yohoa, and a gentleman who 
has traveled extensively in Salvador and is familiar with 
the plant reports it as occurring in that republic only in 
cultivation. Doubtful reports locate it in the mining 
region back of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and near the 
Atlantic coast about Bluefields, Nicaragua, —the latter 
being more probable, as it is more likely to belong to the 
Atlantic slope than the South Coast. In foliage it is. 
much like Y. aloifolia Draconis, the flowers of which, 
however, are different. It is probably this species which 
occurs, in small specimens, in the gardens of Belize, where 
the poetic negroes and Caribs call it ‘* May-pole.’’ The 
Mexican specimens collected by Schiede and Deppe in 1829 
at the Hacienda de la Laguna (about five leagues south of | 
Jalapa, according to a note published by Schiede*) were 
doubtless obtained from a cultivated plant, though Schlech- 
tendal (Linnaea. 17: 270) speaks of its frequent occur- 
rence and mentions the names isote and palmita as applied. 
to this Yucca. 
Throughout Guatemala and Honduras, this tree is known 
as ‘* Izotef,’’ and while it is chiefly cultivated as a rather 
poor hedge plant, the flowers are prized as a table vege- 
table and they are frequently exposed for sale in the mar- 
kets of Guatemala City and other towns, the usual method 
of employing them being to fry them with eggs. No use 
appears to be made of the leaf-fiber, other cordage mate- 
* Baker, Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. 18; 222. — Schiede, Linnaea. 4; 232. 
+ See Jauregui, Vicios del lenguaje y provincialismos de Guatemala. 
340. (Guatemala, 1893). — It is erroneously called Y. gloriosa. 
