16 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. LILIACEE. 
lobes deeply emarginate at the apex. The fruit, which is rather sparingly produced, ripens in August 
and September, and is pendulous, indehiscent, from three to four inches long, about an inch and a 
half thick, usually much constricted near the middle and abruptly contracted at the apex into a short 
stout point, and in ripening turns from green to a tawny yellow color, and then passes through shades 
of brownish purple, finally becoming dark dull brown or nearly black; it has sweet succulent flesh, 
often half an inch in thickness, and a thin light brown inner coat. The seeds are a third of an inch 
wide, rather less than an eighth of an inch thick, and furnished with narrow borders to the rm. 
An inhabitant of the desert, where it is scattered either sigly or in small groups, Yucca 
Mohavensis grows on mountain slopes, which it sometimes ascends to elevations of about four thousand 
feet above the level of the sea, and on the sides of the depressions made by sudden torrents, and is 
distributed from southern Nevada and northeastern Arizona across the Mohave Desert, where it attains 
its largest size, over the western rim of the Colorado Desert and from the southern base of the San 
Bernardino Mountains to the California coast, along which it extends from northern Lower California ’ 
to the neighborhood of Monterey, being less abundant here than in the interior, and often remaining 
stemless in the California coast region. 
The wood of a plant from San Diego, California, is soft, spongy, light brown, and difficult to 
work. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.2724, a cubic foot weighing 16.98 
pounds. 
From the fibres of the leaves gayly decorated blankets are woven by the Indians of southern 
California, who also make them into cords.” 
First noticed in California in 1852 by Dr. C. C. Parry,’ one of the botanists of the expedition sent 
to determine the boundary between the United States and Mexico, Yucca Mohavensis was long 
confounded with the stemless Yucca baccata* of the Colorado plateau and with Yucca macrocarpa of 
western Texas and Chihuahua. 
1 Brandegee, Proc. Cal. Acad. ser. 2, ii. 208 (Pl. Baja Cal.). 
2 Palmer, Am. Nat. xii. 646. 
8 See vii. 130. 
4 Yucca baccata (Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 221 (in part) 
[1859]) is a plant with a subterranean stem, or a stem some eight 
or ten feet long lying prostrate on the surface of the ground, tufts 
of glaucous concave leaves much roughened on the back and from 
three to four feet in length, larger flowers than those of any other 
species of Yucca now known, the perigone often exceeding four 
inches in length, and large indehiscent succulent fruits narrowed at 
Yucca baccata is an inhabitant of the 
Colorado plateau, where it is distributed from southwestern Col- 
the apex into short beaks. 
orado to northern New Mexico and northern Arizona, being abun- 
dant on the high Pine-covered plains south of the caiion of the 
Colorado River, but apparently not extending south of the rim of 
the plateau or descending into the desert. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Puate D. Yucca Mo#AveEnsIs. 
AID OP WON 
. A fruit, natural size. 
A seed, natural size. 
. A branch of a flowering panicle, natural size. 
. Outer segment of the perigone, rear view, enlarged. 
A flower, natural size. 
. The base of a leaf, natural size. 
. The point of a leaf, natural size. 
