THE YUCCEAE. 81 



Y. flexilis patens (Andre) Trelease. 



T. patens Andri, HI. Hort. 17:120. /. (1870). Gard. Chron. 



1871:412. 



r. pruinosa Baker, Gard. Chron. 1870 : 1122. Garden 8: 133. 

 Y. gloriosa pruinosa Baker, Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. 18:226. (1880). 



A garden form, said to have come from China, with less arched glau- 

 cous slightly rough-margined leaves: approaching some of the forms 

 of r. gloriosa. 



Y. gloriosa, Y. recurvifolia, and Y. flexilis, the last 

 two of which have frequently been treated as forms or 

 varieties of the first-named, present a number of interesting 

 and suggestive peculiarities when studied comparatively. 



Y. gloriosa occurs spontaneously among the sand dunes 

 of a restricted portion of the southeastern Atlantic coast, 

 where it is often intimately associated with Y. aloifolia 

 and one or more forms of Y. filamentosa. Y. recurvifolia, 

 except for one isolated group of stations, is known from a 

 still more limited part of the same coast. Y. flexilis is 

 known only in gardens, and its source appears to have been 

 as unknown to its describer as it is to those who now 

 cultivate it. 



About these three so-called species, have clustered in 

 horticultural literature a considerable number of cultivated 

 forms, sometimes treated as varieties of one or the other 

 and sometimes specifically named, all of them entire-leaved 

 with the exception that the margin is more or less persist- 

 ently a little roughened or denticulate or a little filiferous 

 in several of them, and all, so far as I have observed rec- 

 ords, flowering usually in late summer or later, occas- 

 ionally well on to the end of the season. 



These forms are not infrequently aberrant when placed, 

 from the appearance of a character usually present in some 

 other of the three species than the one under which the 

 given form goes on the general assemblage of its characters. 

 This interblending of characters in some of the variants of 

 plants so distinct in their typical forms as Y. gloriosa, Y. 



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