LILIACE. 
24 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
both ends, from two to four feet long, from twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, and raised on 
stout peduncles which are sometimes three or four feet in length, although frequently shorter, and are 
furnished with creamy white acute bracts often flushed with purple toward the apex, and forming 
before the panicle emerges a conspicuous egg-shaped bud from four to six inches long ; the first 
fertile bracts bear in their axils one or usually two flowers; higher on the panicle the bracts are 
smaller, and at the base of the pedicels at the extremities of its branches they are often less than an 
inch in length. The perigone when fully expanded is from three and a half to four inches across, with 
thin ovate acute or lance-ovate creamy white segments often tinged externally with green or purple, 
slightly united at the base, and pubescent at the apex. The stamens are about as long as the ovary, 
with filaments which at first are erect or patulous but commonly become recurved or variously twisted, 
and are hispid or slightly papillose, and with anthers which are usually deeply emarginate at the apex. 
The ovary is sessile, slightly lobed and six-sided, light green, and gradually narrowed upward into 
elongated divergent stigmatic lobes thickened on the back and emarginate at the apex. The fruit, 
which is rarely produced,! is indehiscent, pendulous, about three inches long and an inch in diameter, 
cuspidate at the apex, and raised on a short stout stipe ; when fully grown it is hexagonal, prominently 
six-ridged, with three wide sides corresponding to the backs of the carpels and three alternate much 
narrower depressed sides ; and at maturity the thick outer coat becomes thin, leathery, and almost black, 
and closely invests the thin firm light brown inner coat. The seeds are a quarter of an inch wide and 
about one thirty-second of an inch thick, with smooth testas and uniform albumen.’ 
1 Only two authentic instances of plants of Yucca gloriosa pro- 
ducing fruits are recorded. Several years ago Dr. J. H. Melli- 
champ noticed ripe fruit on a plant near Bluffton, South Carolina, 
which had bloomed early in the season, and in the autumn of 1873 
a plant in the congressional gardens in Washington bore a number 
of fruits which contained fertile seeds. Plants of Yucca gloriosa 
or of some of its forms are said to have borne abortive fruits and 
even mature fruits with fertile seeds in Europe (see Ellacombe, 
Gard. Chron. n. ser. xiii. 21; xxiv. 628), but such statements must 
be accepted with caution, for the determination of the species of 
cultivated Yuccas is difficult and uncertain, and Yucca aloifolia, 
which frequently fruits in European gardens, is often mistaken for 
This habitual infertility 
is probably due to the absence of « Pronuba in the autumn, when 
Yucca gloriosa or for one of its varieties. 
this species generally flowers ; and in the rare instances when it 
has fruited the plants had flowered early in the season before the 
disappearance of Pronuba yuccasella, which no doubt visits early 
blooming individuals and secures the pollination of their flowers. 
It is hardly possible that the existence of this species can always 
have been dependent upon the occasional production of summer 
flowers and the chances of their fertilization; it seems more 
probable that it was formerly visited by an autumn Pronuba which 
has now become extinct, as Kerner von Marilaun suggests (Pflanz- 
enleben, ii. 155); or that it was brought without its peculiar 
Pronuba to Carolina by man or by ocean currents from the coast of 
some of the West Indian islands, or of Mexico or the Spanish main. 
The fact that Yucca gloriosa attains a larger size in warmer regions 
than on the Carolina coast may seem to indicate its introduction 
from a more southern latitude; but, on the other hand, it has 
proved in cultivation one of the hardiest Yuccas, able to thrive, 
although in a stemless form, in regions with much severer climates 
than that of Carolina. It is not easy to account for its spontaneous 
spread along the Carolina coast from one or even several introduced 
individuals, as it usually produces no seed there; and as it is not 
known to grow naturally or even spontaneously elsewhere, it may 
perhaps best be considered a native of the coast of Carolina, 
where, for at least a hundred and fifty years, it has been growing 
apparently naturally and as plentifully as at the present time. 
2 Slight variations in foliage or in the habit of young flowerless 
individuals of this species cultivated in gardens have been seized 
upon by European botanists as evidences of distinct species, and 
the greatest confusion in the names of cultivated Yuccas has 
resulted. The following forms, not known now to occur on the 
Carolina coast but frequently cultivated, are distinguished by 
Engelmann : — 
Yucca gloriosa, var. plicata, Carritre, Rev. Hort. 1860, 359. — 
Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iii. 39.— Baker, Jour. Linn. 
Soc. xviil. 225. 
In this form the leaves are conspicuously plicate, the upper 
and inner being erect and the lowest spreading. 
Var. y recurvifolia, Engelmann, 1. c. (1873). — Baker, 1. c. 
Yucca recurvifolia, Salisbury, Parad. Lond. i. t. 31 (1806). — 
Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 228. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 218. — Elliott, Sk. 
i, 401. — Kunth, Enum. iv. 272. — Spach, Hist. Vég. xii. 286. — 
Chapman, FV. 485. — Baker, Refugium Bot. v. t. 326. — Hemsley, 
The Garden, viii. 133, f. 
Yucca recurva, Haworth, Syn. Pl. Succ. 67 (1812); Suppl. Pl. 
Succ. 35.— Sprengel, Syst. ii. 41.— Roemer & Schultes, Syst. 
vil. pt. i. 719.— Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1094.— The Garden, xlvii. 
337, f. 
Yucca rufocincta, Haworth, Suppl. Pl. Succ. 37 (1819). — Regel, 
Gartenflora, viii. 36. 
Yucca superba, Haworth, 1. c. 36 (1819).— Bot. Reg. xx. t. 
1690. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. vii. pt. i. 720. — Kunth, 1. c. 
273.— Spach, Hist. Vég. xii. 286. 
Yucca pendula, Carriére, Rev. Hort. 1859, 488, t. 104. — The 
Garden, xiii. 455, f. 
Yucca gloriosa nobilis, Carriére, J. c. 1868, 157. 
Yucca gloriosa, var. superba, Baker, Jour. Linn. Soc. xviii. 225 
(1881). 
In this, one of the commonest forms of cultivated Yuccas, the 
leaves are glaucous while young and are thin and recurved ; the 
