LILIACE^ 



121 



a stout thick point, and thin sweet succulent flesh; seeds ^' broad, about \' thick, 

 with thin conspicuous marginal rims. 



A tree, in Arizona rarely 18-20 high, with a trunk often crooked or slightly 

 inclining and simple or furnished with 2 or 3 short erect branches, covered below 

 with dark brown scaly bark, roughened for many years by persistent scars of fallen 

 leaves, and clothed above by the pendant dead leaves of many seasons. 



Distribution. Dry slopes of the mountain ranges of Arizona near the Mexican 

 boundary, usually at elevations between 5000 and 6000, and southward through 

 Sonora. 



**Segments of the flowers united below into a narrow tube. 



6. Yucca Faxoniana, Sarg., nov. nom. Spanish Dagger. 



( Yucca macrocarpa, Silva N. Am. x. 13.) 



Leaves 2-|-4 long, 2^' -3' wide, abruptly contracted above the conspicuously 

 thickened lustrous base, widest above the middle, flat on the upper surface, thick- 

 ened and rounded on the lower surface toward the base, rigid, smooth and clear dark 

 green, with short stout dark spines and brown entire margins breaking into numer- 



al (^. 106 



ous stout gray or brown fibres short and spreading near the apex of the leaf, longer, 

 more remote, and forming a thick cobweb-like mass at their base. Flowers appear- 

 ing in April on thin drooping pedicels, in dense many-flowered glabrous panicles 

 3-4 long, with elongated pendulous branches; perianth 2\' long, the segments thin, 

 concave, widest above the middle, narrowed at the ends, united at the base into a 

 short tube, those of the outer rank being about half as wide as those of the inner 

 rank and two thirds as long; stamens much shorter than the ovary, with slender 

 filaments pilose above the middle and abruptly dilated at the apex; ovary con- 

 spicuously ridged, light yellow marked with large pale raised lenticels, and gradually 

 narroAved into an elongated slender style. Fruit ripening in early summer, slightly 

 or not at all angled, abruptly contracted at the apex into a long or short hooked beak, 

 3' 4' long, V-iy thick, light orange-colored and lustrous when first ripe, becoming 

 nearly black, with thick succulent bitter-sweet flesh; seeds ^ long, about 1' thick, 

 with narrow nearly obsolete margins to the rim. 



A tree, often 40 high, with a trunk sometimes 2 in diameter above the broad 



