LILIACEZ. 
10 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
Yucca Treculeana is distributed from the shores of Matagorda Bay southward through western 
Texas to the valleys of the Sierra Madre of Nuevo Leon, and westward up the valley of the Rio Grande 
to the high plateau at the eastern base of the mountain ranges of western Texas. Just within the 
coast dunes at the mouth of the Rio Grande in Texas lwcca Tieculeana forms open stunted forests, 
and farther inland, where it is one of the common chapparal plants, it spreads into great impenetrable 
thickets. On the margins of the high plains and valleys, where they rise to meet the foothills of the 
Sierra Madre, Vucca Treculeana is the most conspicuous feature of the vegetation,’ forming open 
forests, and growing to a large size; in western Texas it is less abundant and smaller. 
The wood of Jwcca Treculeana is light brown, fibrous, spongy, heavy, and difficult to cut and 
work. ‘The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6677, a cubic foot weighing 41.61 pounds. 
The fruit is cooked and eaten by the Mexicans of the valley of the Rio Grande, and the 
root-stock is used as a substitute for soap. 
Described from a plant cultivated in France, where it was probably first introduced by the 
French naturalist? whose service to botany its specific name commemorates, Yucca Treculeana has long 
ornamented the gardens of southern Europe, growing to a large size, and flowering profusely,’ as it 
does in the gardens of Austin and other Texas cities, which it often enlivens in early spring with 
enormous abundant and splendid clusters of brilliant flowers.* 
1 C. G. Pringle, Garden and Forest, iii. 338. 
? Auguste Adolph Lucien Trécul was born in Mondoubleau, near 
Vendéme, in France, on the 18th of January, 1818, where his 
father was a baker, and was educated in the primary school of his 
native place and in the college at Venddme. On graduating from 
college he went to Paris to study pharmacy, and in 1841 was 
admitted as an assistant in the Paris hospitals, and began the study 
of natural history. A paper published in 1843 in the Annales des 
Sciences Naturelles on the Fruits of Prismatocarpus and on that of 
the Crucifers attracted the attention of the authorities of the Mu- 
seum, who engaged him temporarily to assist in the arrangement 
of the herbarium. At this time Trécul prepared a monograph of 
the Artocarpacee, published in the eighth volume of the third series 
of the Annales, and continued his studies upon the organs of plants, 
to which most of his attention as a botanist has been devoted. In 
1814 he was sent by the Museum to North America to collect 
plants and animals, being also commissioned by the Minister of 
Agriculture and Commerce to study the esculent plants used by 
the Indians of the western plains. Arriving in North America in 
1848, he traveled through the region between the Mississippi River 
and the Rocky Mountains for nearly three years, and returned to 
France in the autumn of 1850. His collections made during the 
first year of his stay in America were lost in the wreck of the ship 
to which they had been intrusted ; but those made in Texas and 
northern Mexico, where he passed the winter of 1849, reached 
France in good condition, and included living plants of Ungnadia 
speciosa, Yucca Treculeana, Sophora secundiflora, Guaiacum angusti- 
Since 1850 
Trécul has devoted himself to morphology and physiology, and has 
folium, Rhus virens, and several species of Cactus. 
published many papers on these subjects in the Comptes Rendus 
de Academie des Sciences, the Journal de Pharmacie, Annales des 
In 1851 he delivered a 
course of lectures on botany before the Institut National Agro- 
Sciences Naturelles, Revue Horticole, etc. 
nomique at Versailles ; but since his return from America has 
occupied no official position. 
° Naudin, Manuel de l’ Acclimateur, 558. — Baker, Kew Bull. Mis- 
cellaneous Information, January, 1892, 8. 
In European gardens Yucca Treculeana is sometimes cultivated 
under the names of Yucca agavoides, Yucca concava, Yucca cornuta, 
Yucca revoluta, and Yucca undulata. (See Carriére, Rev. Hort. 
1858, 580. — Baker, Jour. Linn. Soc. xviii. 226.) 
4 Sargent, Garden and Forest, i. 54, f£. 10. 
