AMERICAN FOREST TREES 693 



portion of the stem is strong and is made into canes and other small 

 articles. Trunks are sometimes used as wharf piles. This palm's 

 range is confined to south Florida in this country, but it is common in 

 the West Indies. In Miami and other towns of southern Florida it is 

 much planted for ornament. 



FANLEAF PALM (Neawashingtoniafilamentosd) also called Washing- 

 ton palm, California fan palm, Arizona palm, and wild date, ranges 

 through southern California, and occupies depressions in the desert 

 west of the Colorado river. There are said to be several forms and 

 varieties. It ranges in height from thirty-five to seventy feet and in 

 diameter from twenty to thirty inches. Trunks are of nearly the same 

 diameter from bottom to top, or taper very gradually. They usually 

 lean a little. Dead leaves hang about the trunks and blaze quickly 

 when fire touches them, but the palm is seldom killed by fire. The 

 small black fruit is about a third of an inch in diameter, and of no com- 

 mercial importance; wood is little used; and the tree is chiefly orna- 

 mental, and has been much planted in California. 



MOHAVE YUCCA (Yucca mohavensis) is one of a half dozen or more 

 palms of the yucca genus and the lily family. Trees of this group are 

 characterized by their stiff, sharp-pointed leaves, some of which are 

 called daggers and others bayonets. Both names are appropriate. The 

 Mohave yucca takes its name from the Mahave desert in California, 

 where it is occasionally an important feature of the doleful landscape. 

 The ragged, leather-like leaves, forming the tops of the short, weird 

 trees, rattle in the wind, or resound with the patter of pebbles when 

 sandstorms sweep across the dry wastes. It is believed to be one of the 

 most slowly-growing trees of this country. Trunks are seldom more 

 than fifteen feet high and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is 

 spongy and interlaced with tough, stringy fibers. Stockmen whose 

 ranges include this tree, make corrals of the stems by setting them in 

 the ground as palisades. When weathered by wind and made bone dry 

 by the sun's fierce heat, the trunks are reduced to almost cork-lightness. 

 Other yuccas are the Spanish bayonet (Yucca treculeana) of Texas; 

 Joshua-tree (Yucca arborescens), which ranges from Utah to California 

 and is known as tree yucca, yucca cactus, and the Joshua; Schott yucca 

 (Yucca brevifolia) of southern Arizona; breadfruit yucca (Yucca macro- 

 car pa) of southwestern Texas; aloe-leaf yucca (Yucca aloifolid) with a 

 range from North Carolina near the coast to Louisiana; and Spanish 

 dagger (Yucca gloriosa), on the coast and islands of South Carolina. 



GIANT CACTUS (Cereus gigantcus) is a leafless tree of Arizona and attains a 

 height of forty or sixty feet, diameter of one or two. About twenty genera of cactus 

 are known in the world and a large number of species. Two genera, the cereuses and 



