104 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



branches, glabrous. Flowers creamy white, rather small ; style short,, 

 constricted? stigma deeply 6-lobed. Fruit oblong: seeds 7X7 to 8 

 mm. Plates 60. 61. 85, f. 2. 



Tablelands of Mexico, from southern Coahuila, central 

 Nuevo Leon and western Tamaulipas to Queretaro and, 

 perhaps, the Federal District, where, at least, it occurs as 

 an introduced plant. Plate 96, f. 2. 



Fragmentary specimens of the large tree Yuccas of north- 

 ern Mexico, which are locally called palmas, in contrast 

 with the smaller narrow-leaved species, like Y. rostrata and 

 Y. radiosa, which are known by the diminutive names 

 palmita or palmilla, were collected about Saltillo by Dr. 

 Gregg, as early as 1846, and near Parras by Dr. Thurber, 

 in 1853. In his personal narrative,* John Eussell Bartlett, 

 United States Commissioner on the United States and 

 Mexican boundary survey of 1850-1853, speaks of these 

 large trees and gives a figure representing a branched 

 tree, evidently 8 or 10 m. high, with a number of 

 erect stalked panicles. This is the form which Dr. 

 Torreyf refers to under Y. baccata, though he considers 

 the single leaf and immature fruit collected by Thurber as 

 insufficient to warrant either the description of a new 

 species or its positive identification with his Y. baccata 

 macrocarpa. 



About 1860, Roezl and Galeotti sent seeds of many 

 decorative Mexican plants to European dealers, by whom 

 they were distributed, and among these were seeds of one 

 or more of the large Yuccas, which were soon cultivated in 

 a number of gardens in the southern countries, in part 

 under the dealers' name Y. fill f era. Ten years later, Mr. 

 Baker provisionally published the names Y. periculosa, 

 Y.polyphylla, Y. circinata, Y. scabrifolia and Y. fragili- 

 folia, for plants cultivated in England by Mr. "Wilson Saun- 

 ders,but concerning the origin of which nothing is said, and 



* Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents. 2 : 490-1. (1854). 

 t Bot. Bound. 222. (1859). 



