74 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST, 



form striking features of the landscape and may readily be 

 detected a mile or more away. Its growth is slow at first 

 and several years may elapse before it gets a good start ; 

 but as soon as a "head" of leaves is formed, growth be- 

 comes rapid and when the leaves have attained a length 

 of about six feet the great flower-stalk begins to shoot up- 

 ward ; this stem, which is six to nine inches in diameter 

 where it emerges from the leaves, rapidly attains a height 

 ol 30, 40 or even 50 feet. 



The leaves are flatter and not so thick in the middle as 

 those of most century plants, while the spines on the mar- 

 gin are much fewer and the point is blunt instead of being 

 prolonged into a savage-looking awl. The true stem is 

 two to five feet high and some nine or more inches in diam- 

 eter. The old leaves at the top of this trunk, alter about 

 one year, turn 3'ellow and hang down, thus even after 

 their death forming a protective covering to the only vul- 

 nerable part of the plant. 



The flowers are borne on the peduncle in the stjde of a 

 receme with the branchlets irregularly placed and about 

 two to four feet in length; in shape the3^ resemble the 

 tuberose, though they are over two inches long ; the color 

 is greenish yellow with a few pink dots on the outside ; 

 the odor is pronounced, but, as may be inferred from the 

 name, it cannot be called fragrant. 



This queen of centui"^' plants is too wise to produce a 

 40-foot flower-stalk and keep it fresh for a year and still 

 run the risk of failure to mature seeds. No matter how 

 heavy it rains or how few the pollen-bearing insects, it 

 Still can abundantl3' reproduce its kind; in fact it seems 

 to have lost faith in seeds entirely, for I have never been 

 able to find a seed-pod on the plant. Scattered along the 

 branchlets with the flowers and even in the axils of the 

 stem, are borne vast numbers of bulbils, or small plants in 

 the form of adventitious shoots. These may be regarded 

 as merely transformed flowers, but since there are no half- 

 way stages and as the axils are invaribly filled with them, 

 it would seem better to consider them as modified, leafy 



