A DWARF FORM OF AGAVE ANGUSTIFOLIA. 
BY WILLIAM TRELEASE. 
Among a number of interesting unnamed forms dating 
from the enthusiastic days of agave cultivation of a genera- 
tion ago, Professor C. S. Sargent, of Brookline, Mass., pre- 
sented to the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1909 a little 
plant obviously of the alliance of Agave angustifolia but dif- 
fering from that species as ordinarily known in its small 
size and narrowly oblong leaves with reduced prickles, and in 
not suckering. The flowering of this plant in the summer 
of 1911 enables me to describe it. Though there is reason 
to believe that when purchased it bore one of the barely or 
not at all placeable names under which rarities in this genus 
were sold thirty years or more ago,—for in appearance it is 
strikingly different from the usual forms of Agave Jacqui- 
niana, A. ixtlioides, A. excelsa or A. rigida, as A. angusti- 
folia has been called commonly,* I find no means of con- 
necting any published name with it, and therefore take pleas- 
ure in naming it for Professor Sargent. So far as is now 
known, the specimen is unique, but it is certain that others 
of its kind must have found their way into the collections 
of amateurs at the time when this was bought, and it will be 
interesting to learn where it may still be found in cultiva- 
tion either in such original plants or in derivatives from 
them, and under what names. 
Agave angustifolia Sargentii Trelease. 
Dwarf, shortly caulescent, not suckering. Trunk about 25 cm. 
high. Leaves numerous, spreading, straight, slightly grayish green, 
smooth, dull, narrowly oblong-lanceolate, 2.525 cm., from flatly 
biconvex becoming shallowly concave toward the end: spine blackish 
gray, rather dull, minutely granular-roughened, 320-25 mm., not 
decurrent, the upper face flattened or with a low keel: prickles 10-15 
mm. apart, nearly black, glossy, 1-2 mm. long, variously but prevail- 
ingly up-curved, the very slender cusps from broadly triangular bases, 
* See Rept. Mo. Bot. Gard. 19 : 284. 
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