LILIACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 17 
YUCCA SCHOTTII. 
Spanish Dagger. 
PANICLE coated with hoary tomentum. Leaves concave above the middle, smooth, 
light yellow-green. 
Yucca Schottii, Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. 46 Yucca baccata, Engelmann, Rothrock Wheeler's Rep. vi. 
(1873). — Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xiv. 252. — Baker, 270 (in part) (1878). 
Jour. Linn. Soc. xviii. 228. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Yucca macrocarpa, Engelmann, Bot. Gazette, vi. 224 (not 
Cent. iii. 371. — Trelease, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. Yucca baccata var. macrocarpa, Torrey) (1881). — 
iii. 162; iv. 185, t. 3. Baker, Kew Bull. Misc. Information, January, 1892, 8. — 
Yucca puberula, Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 221 Trelease, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iii. 162, ‘t. 46. — 
(not Haworth) (1859). Toumey, Garden and Forest, viii. 22. 
A tree, in Arizona rarely eighteen or twenty feet in height, with a trunk which is often crooked 
or slightly inclining, and is simple or furnished with two or three short erect branches, not more than 
ten inches in diameter, covered below with dark red-brown scaly bark from a third to a half of an inch 
in thickness, roughened for many years by the persistent scars of the leaf-bases, and clothed above by 
the pendent dead leaves of many seasons. The leaves are lanceolate, from two and a half to three feet 
in length, and gradually narrowed upward from the thin lustrous red base, which is three or three and 
a half inches in width, to above the middle, where they are an inch and a half broad; they are light 
yellow-green and smooth, with thick entire red-brown margins, which eventually separate sparingly into 
short thin smooth brittle threads, and are flat except toward the apex, where they gradually become 
strongly concave, and end in long rigid sharp light red-brown points, and toward the base, where they 
are slightly thickened and rounded. ‘The flowers appear from July to September in an erect 
pedunculate panicle with a short rachis and stout slender branches growing from it at nearly right 
angles, and then turning abruptly upward, the whole clothed with loose hoary tomentum, which also 
covers the short stout erect or spreading pedicels; the bracts are lanceolate, white and fleshy, and vary 
from eighteen inches in length at the base of the panicle, where they terminate in long rigid points, to 
less than an inch on its ultimate divisions, where they are thin and membranaceous, often falling before 
the flowers. The perigone is from an inch to an inch and three quarters long, and on the outer 
surface is pubescent at the base, its broad oval or oblong-obovate thin segments being tipped at the 
apex with conspicuous clusters of white tomentum, and often slightly pilose on the back. The stamens 
are not more than two thirds as long as the ovary, with flattened filaments pilose from the base, and 
only slightly enlarged at the apex. The ovary is cylindrical, gradually narrowed above, and crowned 
by a short stout deeply lobed style. The fruit, which in Arizona is produced sparingly, and ripens in 
October and November, is pendulous, indehiscent, slightly angled, from three and a half to four inches 
in length, about an inch and a quarter in thickness, often narrowed above the middle, tipped by a stout 
thick point, and surrounded at the base with the remains of the perigone; at first pale green when 
fully grown, it turns orange-color and finally black in ripening ; the flesh is thin, sweet, and succulent, 
and closely invests the thin light brown inner coat. The seeds are a quarter of an inch broad, and 
about an eighth of an inch thick, with thin conspicuous marginal rims. 
In the United States, where it is nowhere abundant, Yucca Schottii inhabits the dry slopes of the 
mountain ranges of Arizona adjacent to the Mexican boundary, usually at elevations of between five 
and six thousand feet above the level of the sea, but occasionally following their canons down to the 
high mesas at their base, and ranges southward through Sonora. 
