200 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



ever, that forms of aloifoHa have been cultivated frequently 

 under the name of gloriosa or wrongly referred to that 

 species,* and an editorial mention in the American Agri- 

 culturist for 1872, xxxi. p. 461, of the apparent absence 

 of insects from the pulpy fruits ' ' as soft as a banana ' ' 

 of gloriosa, in Georgia, undoubtedly refers to aloifolia. 

 Professor Riley limits the power of self-fertilization so 

 far as known to aloifolia ;f and it may be questioned 

 whether the French gloriosa seedlings mentioned by him 

 in a quotation from The Garden^ were not really aloifolia, 

 though it is not distinctly stated that they were not the 

 result of artificial pollination. I have no personal knowl- 

 edge of the fruiting of true gloriosa except in the case 

 figured on plate 7 of the Third Garden Report, where a 

 specimen 'cultivated in Washington produced fruit side by 

 side with a. plant of aloifolia, and in this case the fruits 

 were more or less deformed, as if by Pronuba. 



A rather narrow-leaved form of this species, cultivated 

 in the Garden under the name of Y. nivea, bloomed in 

 the early part of September, 1892, and showed nearly as 

 great activity of the septal glands as the specimen of 

 Guatemalensis already described, the nectar appearing in 

 considerable drops within the bottom of the perianth, about 

 the almost pilose bases of the filaments. While the aloifo- 

 lia of the Garden was fruitful without the aid of Pronuba 

 or hand pollination, and both aloifolia and Guatemalensis 

 yielded fruit when artificially pollinated, this plant set 

 no fruit, though a number of flowers were pollinated by 

 Mr. Webber. It will be of interest, therefore, to have 

 observations made on gloriosa, whether wild or cultivated 

 in its native region. The later blooming of this species, 



the other hand in a popular account of Yucca pollination, in his Pflan- 

 zenleben, ii. 155, Kerner von Marilaun states that the fruit of this 

 species is quite unknown both on wild and cultivated plants, and it 

 is said that the moth adapted to gloriosa has become extinct. 



* Trans. St. Louis Academy, iii. 211 ; Collected Writings, 297-8. 



t Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci. xxxi. 467. 



I Proc. Amer. Ass. Adv. Sci. xxix. 624. 



