34 ANIMAL LIFE OF CARLSBAD CAVERN 



very rigid, the leaves are so sharp-pointed as to afford 

 good protection to nesting birds,' — white-necked ravens, 

 orioles, thrashers, cactus wrens, and many others. 

 Fortunately the plant is not edible and, since the days 

 when Indians used its leaves for baskets and its roots for 

 soap, is rarely injured by men or animals. 



A low, trunkless form grows on the east side of the 

 Pecos River and over the Staked Plains, just as a 

 smaller form of Yucca macrocarpa grows over the higher 

 ridges of the Guadalupe Mountains. 



The sotol (Dasylirion leiophyllum) (Fig. 9) is one of 

 the most graceful and picturesque plants of the desert, 

 with its rounded mass of basal leaves, growing often in 

 hourglass form with spreading evergreen leaves above 

 and drooping, old, yellow leaves below, and with its 

 tall flower stalk bearing a graceful wand of small 

 creamy flowers rising fifteen or twenty feet higher. 

 Like many desert plants, it grows long and slowly, 

 storing up plant food for many years until it can make 

 its primal effort of blossoming and fruiting without 

 regard to the rains. Sometimes this effort so exhausts 

 it that it dies, but generally it lives to store another 

 reserve of food, and to blossom again and again. In 

 places it is the dominant plant over miles of arid, 

 rocky slopes. Heavily armed with stout recurved 

 hooks along the margins of the ribbon-like leaves, which 

 effectively protect its rich store of food from grazing 

 animals, it is often used by the ranchmen as a rescue 

 food for starving stock in times of drought, the stems 

 being split by broad cleavers so the cattle can eat out 

 the crisp rich hearts. To the Indians it was also a 



