34Q 



farcroydes. 



It is possible that certain of the the plants of common origin with this, noted 

 below, may develop later into striata and even marginntd variegations of the 

 same coloration. 



In 1Q05 a specimen of the gray sisal, — the henequen form 

 most cultivated for fiber in Yucatan, flowered at 

 the Missouri Botanical Garden, and later produced 

 several thousand bulbils in the inflorescence, The 

 parent plant, like a number of others of the same 

 kind raised from seed twenty-five years or more 

 ago, was of the typical coloration and showed no 

 observed sign of variegation. Among its bulbils 

 planted at the Garden, however, one or two were 

 Seen to have dingily variegated leaves, and an 

 examination of about 425 bulbils, which remained 

 of the original number, revealed traces of variegation 

 in 18. It is probable that similar variegations were 

 present in some of the remainder, of which a few 

 had been distributed to botanical gardens, though 

 the larger part were sent to a Brazilian correspondent for experi- 

 mental planting. 



Of the plants in which the variegation was observed, the 

 larger number have one or mostly a few narrow lines of greenish 

 white running longitudinally as in the more obscurely striated 

 form of A. amerkana, sometimes confined to one surface, but often 

 with corresponding lines on the other side of the relatively thick 

 young leaves. Sometimes these pale lines are observably sunken 

 below the general leaf surface. Two specimens have an uneven 

 marginal band of the same pale color on some of their leaves. 

 One, only, of the bulbils retained shows on both faces a defined 

 median stripe of greenish white, occupying as large a proportion 

 of the width of the leaf as in the median-banded form of amerkana, 

 like which, it has this band somewhat interrupted by lines of green. 

 One other specimen has a less perfect development of the same 

 type of variegation. 



So far as I know, no variegation of this species has before 

 been reported'). The nomenclature of its unvariegated form is 

 rather involved. It is commonly called Agave rkjkki elonnata, Baker; 

 .1. rii/ida loniffolkt Engel mann is an earlier name for it, and 



') An incipient ray of etiolation may, however, have been indicated by 

 RoI and-Gosseli n, under the name A. [xtli, in 1899, 



