lO 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Vid. 8. A Wand-like Spike. 



characteristic of the Grand Canon, and a garden LiitcEa which many 

 years ago I named in commemoration of the accurate student of this 

 group of plants, Engelmann. 



Agave parvi flora is clearly a Liiia:a, with its flowers rather loosely 

 disposed along the upper part of an inflorescence wand scarcely thicker 

 than a goose-quill, but its flowers by no means grow in pairs, thougli 

 each short main stalk forks at the beginning. On tlie contrary, 

 clusters of six or eight flowers — of which all but two or four commonly 

 fail to develoji — are borne by its forked primary branches, a study of 

 which is capable of throwing much light on the reduced rather tlian 

 primitive typical twin flowers of the litta?as. 



As with all of the agaves that have been studied so far, this species 

 matures the stamens and pistils of a given flower at different times. 

 The flowers, whicli open early in the morning, quickly protrude their 

 atamens and shed their pollen immediately, but the style is then no 



