THE YUCCEAE. Ill 



the vicinity of Presidio del Norte, Dr. Bigelow is said to 

 have found a Yucca 3 to 5 m. high, with leaves almost 

 exactly like those of Y. baccata, and longer though not 

 thicker fruit, for which Dr. Torrey proposed the name of 

 Y. baccata macrocarpa. In 1871, Dr. Engelmann* merged 

 this form with Y. baccata, noting that though northward a 

 low plant, this species becomes a tree farther south ; but in 

 his notes on the genus, published two years later, f he 

 accords names to two forms of Y. baccata, the typical sub- 

 acaulescent, large-flowered and long-styled plant, which he 

 calls forma genuina, and the southern branched arborescent 

 plant with smaller flowers and shorter style, which he calls 

 variety australis, noting that certain California specimens 

 are intermediate in foliage between the northern and south- 

 ern extremes. 



In discussing the plants collected or studied by the 

 Death Valley expedition, Mr. Coville applied the name Y. 

 macrocarpa to the baccate tree Yucca of southern Cali- 

 fornia and southern Nevada, with the qualification that 

 though he had not had an opportunity to investigate the 

 identity of this Mohave Desert species with the West 

 Texas form to which Dr. Torrey had applied the name 

 varietally under Y. baccata, they were supposed to be the 

 same ; and Dr. Merriam accepted this conclusion in his 

 account of the distribution of the tree in the Death Valley 

 region. 



On the occasion of the flowering of a Yucca trunk re- 

 ceived by the New York Museum of Natural History from 

 Sierra Blanca, Texas, Professor Sargent, J in publishing a 

 figure of it, expressed the opinion that the specific name 

 macrocarpa should be limited to this tree of western Texas; 

 and the next year he proposed for the California plant 



* Bot. King. 496. 



t Trans. Acad. Sci, St. Louis. 3 : 44. 

 J Gard. & Forest. 8 : 301. /. 42. (1895). 

 Gard. & Forest. 9 : 104. 



