108 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



direction with the branch, hence either erect, horizontal, ascending or 

 downwardly turned. Plates 62-67. 85, f. 3. 



Central Lower California, and on the high table land 

 of central Mexico in the states of Durango, Zacatecas and 

 San Luis Potosi. Plate 97,f.l. 



Reference has been made to a figure by Bartlett,* rep- 

 resenting somewhat sketchily a large branched tree with 

 erect panicles, supposed to illustrate the largest Yucca of 

 the region between Parras and Saltillo, and of which speci- 

 mens were collected by Dr. Thurber on the boundary 

 survey. This figure has been commonly discredited since 

 the pendent inflorescence of Y. australis has been known, 

 though a trunk of the latter, sent to Kew from about Mon- 

 terey by Mr. Pringle in 1888, bore in 1890 a panicle not 

 unlike those shown by Bartlett, f and Dr. Barroeta of San 

 Luis Potosi once sent to Dr. Engelmann a sketch show- 

 ing a merely arched inflorescence. 



Among the plants studied by him in Lower California^ 

 Mr. Brandegee found a tree Yucca which he named Y, 

 valida, publishing a very inadequate description and a 

 reproduction of a Kodak photograph showing a tree with 

 short thick trunk quickly breaking into a number of erect 

 secondary stems apparently some 8 or 10 m. high. 



About Durango, Mexico, in April, 1900, I observed 

 Yuccas of the simpler trunk form assumed by Y. australis., 

 and with similar foliage and flowers, which attracted my 

 attention by their relatively short and thick spreading pan- 

 icles, markedly different from the elongated and pendent 

 flower-clusters of the latter species. So far as inflorescence 

 could be seen, this proved to be the only species of this 

 type along the Mexican Central railroad between about 

 Canitas and Chicalote, and it forms great forests on the 

 elevated red lands about Gutierrez, Fresnillo and Calera. 

 where it often assumes the low compact form noted for 



* Personal Narrative. 2:490-1. (1854). 

 t Baker, Bot. Mag. iii. 47. pi. 7197. 



