LILIACER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 27 
YUCCA CONSTRICTA. 
Spanish Dagger. 
LEAVES thin and flat, filamentose on the margins, smooth, pale yellow-green. 
Yucca constricta, Buckley, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1862,8.— Yucca angustifolia, 8 elata, Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis 
Baker, Jour. Linn. Soe. xviii. 229. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Acad. iii. 50 (1873) ; Rothrock Wheeler's Rep. vi. 270. 
Am. Cent. iii. 370. Yucca elata, Engelmann, Bot. Gazette, vii. 17 (1882). — 
Yucca polyphylla, Baker, Gard. Chron. 1870, 1088. Sargent, Forest Trees North Am. 10th Census U.S. ix. 
Yucca angustifolia, 8 radiosa, Engelmann, Watson King’s 219; Garden and Forest, ii. 569, f. 146. — Coulter, 
Rep. v. 496 (1871). Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 437 (Alan. Pl. W. Texas). — 
Toumey, Garden and Forest, viii. 22. 
A tree, with a trunk often ten or twelve feet in height and seven or eight inches in diameter, 
covered above with a thick thatch of the pendent dead leaves of many years, and below with dark 
brown irregularly fissured bark broken into thin plates and about a quarter of an inch in thickness, 
often simple and sometimes beginning to flower when only a few inches tall, or branched with many 
short stout branches densely covered with leaves which are at first erect, then spread nearly at right 
angles and are pendulous at the bottom of the clusters, and a tough and much-branched underground 
stem penetrating deeply into the soil. The leaves are lanceolate and rigid, gradually diminish in 
width from the thin base, which is from two to two and a half inches broad and white and marked with 
an orange-colored band where it narrows into the blade, and taper toward the apex or are sometimes 
somewhat broader at the middle than below; they are thin and flat on the upper surface, slightly 
thickened and rounded on the back toward the base, tipped with slender stiff red-brown points from 
one half to three quarters of an inch long, smooth, pale yellow-green, from twenty to thirty inches in 
length and from one quarter to one half of an inch wide, with thickened entire pale margins which soon 
split into numerous long slender filaments ; or on young plants or at the base of the panicle of flowers 
they are often not more than a foot long and an eighth of an inch wide. The flowers, which open in 
May and June, are borne on slender spreading or more or less recurved pedicels in glabrous much- 
branched panicles from four to six feet in length and raised on stout naked stems from three to seven 
feet long ; their bracts are ovate, acute, white, membranaceous, deciduous, and from four to six inches 
in length, or toward the apex of the panicle not more than an inch long. The perigone is ovate and 
acute in the bud, and when fully expanded is from three and a half to four inches across; the segments 
are thin and creamy white and united at the base into a short slender distinct tube, ovate or slightly 
obovate and tipped by small pubescent mucros, those of the outer rank being usually acute and not 
more than half as broad as those of the inner rank, which are often an inch wide and are frequently 
rounded at the apex. The stamens are as long as the ovary or a little longer, with slender nearly terete 
villous-papillate filaments, and anthers which discharge their pollen when the flowers first open. The 
ovary is sessile, almost terete, furnished with well developed active septal nectar glands,’ pale green and 
abruptly contracted into a stout white style from one quarter to one third of an inch long and crowned 
by white stigmatic lobes slightly thickened dorsally. The fruit is an erect oblong capsule rounded and 
obtuse at both ends, tipped by a short stout mucro, raised on a short thickened stipe, conspicuously 
three-ribbed with rounded ridges on the backs of the carpels, from an inch and a half to two inches in 
length and from an inch to an inch and a half wide, with a thin firm light brown ligneous outer coat 
closely adherent to the slightly thinner tough inner coat which is lustrous, light yellow, and marked with 
1 Trelease, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iv. 203. ? Trelease, J. c. 202. 
