THE CENTURY PLANT 



209 



Perhaps the most curious thing that I can say of the real Agave 

 Americana is that nobody knows to-day where to seek it as a spontane- 

 ous plant, and, except about the Mediterranean, where it has spread 

 extensively, it seems to be found only as an obvious local escape from 

 cultivation. It looks very much as if the Spanish conquerors took 

 home, as one of their first illustrations of the maguey, a decorative 

 rather than a much-used plant, which even then probably existed only 

 in cultivation. 



The traveler through that wonderfully interesting dry region to 

 the southwest of us, the Mexican tableland, has his attention at- 

 tracted by many of these candelabrum-bearing agaves. Even before 

 reaching Laredo, if he go by that gateway into the neighboring republic, 



Fig. 1. Oddly called Bamboo. 



he may see one large species, A. asperrima. If he enter by way of El 

 Paso from the east, another, A. Parry i, may draw his notice, or, coining 

 from the west, he may have seen another, A. Palmeri; and toward 

 Nogales, the entrance point for Sonora, one of the most striking of 

 them, with almost globose clusters of leaves, A. Huachucensis, is visible 

 from the train. 



One of the most effective of these landscape-making plants covers 

 certain mountain-sides near Tehuacan, a health resort which every 

 visitor to Oaxaca and the wonderful ruins of Mitla passes through 

 after leaving Puebla. Its stately panicles are of a brilliant yellow, 

 and more beautiful than those of the ordinary century plant; and its 

 great rough leaves are so marbled with alternating greener and grayer 

 cross bands that it has received the distinctive name A. marmorata. 



VOL. LXX. — 14. 



