ENGEI.MAXX NOTES ON AGAVE. 299 



firmly closed : but now it begins to elongate and attains its func- 

 tional maturity 4S hours after the anthers have opened, which 

 by this time have mostly fallen off.* 



The Agave flowers are odorous, some of them, like A. Virgi- 

 m'ca, of the sweetest fragrance, resembling tuberose, though not 

 so overpowering ; others are more or less fetid. These odors are 

 most fully developed, as is also the case in the tuberose, in the 

 evening and at night, indicating undoubtedly the design of attract- 

 ing vespertine insects to assist in pollenization. But whether 

 insects aid in this process, or the higher-placed flowers drop their 

 pollen from the just bursting anthers on the opening stigmas of 

 the lower and older ones, has not been ascertained. 



The fruit is always an erect, dry, 3-celled capsule, globose or 

 even depressed, or ovate, oblong and sometimes prismatic, ob- 

 tuse at base or contracted into a sort of a stipe, obtusish at tip or 

 acute or rostrate, opening above, generally about the upper third 

 or half only. The numerous horizontal seeds are flat, black, 

 semi-orbicular or obliquely orbicular with a shining or opaque 

 surface, which, magnified 100 or 150 diameters, shows the epi- 

 dermal cells flat and scarcely distinct from one another, or with 

 distinct, somewhat elevated cell-walls ; or they are slightly de- 

 pressed, giving the seed a pitted appearance, or rarely elevated 

 and tubercular. The areas of these cells are very minutely dotted 

 or pitted. 



The filiform, cylindric, or slightly compressed embryo is as 

 long as the hard, whitish, semi-transparent, farinaceous and oily 

 albumen. In germination the seed-shell is elevated above the 

 ground on top of the largely developed foliaceous cotyledon, con- 

 trary to the behavior of Yucca, where the husk enclosing the 

 small and soon decaying cotyledon remains buried in the ground. 

 (See Notes on Yucca, 3, p. 20.) 



Some species bear no fruit, but, in place of the withered flower, 

 or probably in the axil of its bractlet, a bud or bulblet appears, 

 which grows to a considerable size and will eventually sprout 

 and propagate the plant. All the so-called viviparous Agaves 



* In figures of Agave flowers we not rarely meet with bursting anthers and a fully elon- 

 gated style in the same flower; which I suppose is factitious, and not founded on correct 

 observation. 



