14 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. LILIACEE. 
when it first ripens, and ultimately nearly black, with a thick succulent, although not juicy, bitter sweet 
and luscious outer coat and a thin light brown membranaceous inner coat. The seed 1s a quarter of 
an inch in length and about an eighth of an inch in thickness, with narrow or nearly obsolete margins 
to the rim.’ 
Yucea macrocarpa, which is the largest of the Yuccas that inhabit the United States, 1s common 
on the high desert plateau of southwestern Texas, where it is the most conspicuous feature of the 
vegetation, growing with Agaves, Nolinas, Cacti, and smaller Yuccas, in an open forest, and attaining 
its greatest size on the wide slopes leading up to the base of the mountains; it ranges westward into 
New Mexico and southward over the highlands of northern Mexico.’ 
The wood of Yucca macrocarpa has not been examined. 
When slightly dried over a fire the green leaves of this plant become supple and can easily be 
slit into narrow shreds, which are used as withes, or substitutes for ropes in binding sheaves of grain, 
bundles of hay, and the loads of pack-saddles. Mexicans and Indians also obtain from the green leaves 
a strong smooth white fibre about three feet in length, by scraping them with a knife, leaving the 
shreds to dry for a short time upon the ground, washing them to remove the pith, and then combing 
the fibres or pulling them apart by hand.’ 
In the United States Vucca macrocarpa was first noticed in September, 1852, in southwestern 
Texas by Dr. J. M. Bigelow,* one of the botanists of the Mexican Boundary Survey. 
The arid and inhospitable region which is the home of this tree is made beautiful in early spring 
by its broad panicles rising above the dense clusters of long dark green sword-shaped leaves with their 
drooping branches and large closely crowded flowers, and gleaming in the sunlight like countless 
spray-covered fountains.” 
1 No observations on the pollination of this species have been 
made. It blooms with or a little later than Yucca Treculeana, and. 
a month earlier than Yucca constricta, with which species it is 
associated in western Texas, and the fruit shows the work of the 
larve of a Pronuba (Trelease, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iv. 192). 
* 2 Jt is probably Yucca macrocarpa which attracts the attention of 
travelers on the Mexican Central Railway in Chihuahua. It was 
collected by Pringle on limestone hills in the Carneros Pass, Chi- 
huahua, in 1889 and 1891 (Nos. 2841, 3912), and is perhaps the 
No. 1571 of Coulter’s Mexican collection in Herb. Gray. 
3 Havard, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. viii. 516 (Yucca baccata). 
* See i. 88. 
5 Garden and Forest, viii. 301, f. 42. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Pirate CCCCXCIX. 
. Portion of a branch of a flowering panicle, natural size. 
. A fruit, natural size. 
. A seed, natural size. 
SO Oo P CO DN 
. A seedling, natural size. 
YuccA MACROCARPA. 
. The base of a leaf, natural size. 
. The point of a leaf, natural size. 
