LILIACER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 15 
YUCCA MOHAVENSIS. 
Spanish Dagger. 
LEAVES concave, smooth, light yellow-green. 
Yucca Mohavensis, Sargent, Garden and Forest, ix. 104 (in part). —S. B. Parish, Garden and Forest, iv. 136 ; 
(1896). Zoé, iv. 348. — Trelease, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iii. 
Yucca filamentosa ? Wood, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1868, 167 162 (in part), t. 2; iv. 185 (in part). 
(not Linnzus). Yucca macrocarpa, Merriam, North American Fauna, 
Yucca baccata, Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. No. 7, 358, t. 14 (Death Valley Exped. ii.) (not Yucca 
44 (in part) (1873). — Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xiv. baccata, var. macrocarpa, Torrey, nor Yucca macrocarpa, 
252 (in part). — Baker, Jour. Linn. Soc. xviii. 229 (in Engelmann) (1893). — Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. 
part). — Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. ii. 164 (in part). — iv. 202 (Bot. Death Valley Exped.) (in part). 
Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 219 
A tree, rarely exceeding fifteen feet in height, with a trunk which is usually simple, or occasionally 
furnished with short spreading branches, and is six or eight inches in diameter, covered toward the 
base with dark brown bark, and generally surrounded by a cluster of shorter more or less spreading 
stems often clothed to the ground with living leaves, and thus forming small thickets, and thick 
branching root-stocks. The leaves are lanceolate, abruptly contracted above the thickened dark red 
and lustrous base, which is from three to three and a half inches wide, gradually narrowed upward 
to above the middle, where they are often an inch and a half in width, thin and concave except toward 
the slightly thickened base of the blade, the two edges being almost closed together near the apex, 
which terminates in a stout dark rigid sharp-pointed tip; they are light yellow-green, smooth on 
both surfaces, and from eighteen to twenty-four inches in length, with entire margins which at first 
are bright red-brown but soon begin to separate into numerous long pale smooth thick filaments. 
The flowers appear from March on the deserts of the interior to the begmning of May on the coast ; 
they are produced in densely flowered panicles which are glabrous or roughened with reddish brown 
scurfy pubescence, usually more or less flushed with purple, sessile or short-stemmed, from twelve to 
eighteen inches in length, and furnished near the base of the rachis and below the lowest branch with a 
pair of flowers, and are borne on slender nearly erect ultimately drooping pedicels from an inch to an 
inch and a half in length, and occasionally forked near the middle and two-flowered ; the bracts at the 
base of the panicle are linear-lanceolate, sharp-pointed, from eight to ten inches in length, white 
below and green and leaf-like above the middle; those at the base of the short and rather slender 
branches of the panicle are from five to seven inches in length, creamy white on the inner surface, and 
more or less deeply tinged with purple on the outer; and those at the base of the pedicels near the apex 
of the panicle are often not more than half an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide. The 
flowers vary much in size, even on neighboring plants, on some the perigone being two and a half 
inches and on others not more than an inch in length; the segments are united at the base into a 
short tube, and are thickened and hood-shaped at the apex, which is furnished with a tuft of pale 
hairs; those of the outer rank, which are often deeply flushed with purple, are much thickened 
externally toward the base and keeled along the back with a stout keel extending slightly above the 
rounded apex, narrowed below, concave and slightly grooved on the inner face and but little longer 
than the less prominently ribbed usually wider and thinner segments of the inner rank. The stamens 
rise nearly to the base of the stigma, with filaments which are rounded or flattened on the back and 
more or less pilose from the base upward. The ovary is sessile, slightly three-lobed, pale green, 
gradually narrowed above into a short stout three-lobed style penetrated by a wide stigmatic tube, the 
