Trelease — The Agaveae of Guatemala. 131 



at the Missouri Botanical Garden, for the use of which 

 I am indebted to the present Director of the Garden. 



From repeated observations on the Mexican species 

 of this genus and the conspicuous localization of those 

 of Baja California 8 and the West Indies, 9 I have been 

 quite prepared to find that in Guatemala the agaves are 

 distinctly different — not only in species but in character- 

 istic groups — from those of Mexico, while differing even 

 more markedly from those of the Antilles. Unfortu- 

 nately the greater number of those here reported must 

 be differentiated on vegetative characters only, so that 

 it is quite within the range of possibility that some of 

 them may be found divisible when added material comes 

 to hand. I have shown in earlier studies 10 that the char- 

 acters derivable from the arming of the leaves in this 

 genus are remarkably constant, and the foliage in- 

 dications are that all of the Guatemalan species are 

 Euagaves. 



My personal opportunities for study and collection 

 in Guatemala have extended only to the central moun- 

 tain region, in which a marked division of the year into 

 a rainy and a dry season occurs, the contrast between 

 which is so great that the majority of plants lose their 

 foliage and pass into a dormant state, with well devel- 

 oped scaly buds, for the long dry season, just as our 

 northern plants hibernate, though the Guatemalan tem- 

 perature may be even higher than in the rainy season. 

 So far as I know, none of the agaves occur spontaneously 

 at less than about 2000 feet above sea level, though one 

 cultivated species does well to within a few hundred feet 

 of the sea on the Pacific slope. That the dry region 

 about Salama, which I have not been able to visit, may 

 furnish other species is very probable, and almost half 



s Trelease, Rept. Mo. Bot. Gard. 22: 38-41. 1912. 

 o Trelease, Memoirs Natl. Acad. Sci. 11: 6-11, etc. 1913. 

 io Trans. Acad. Sci. St. Louis. 18: 31. 1909.— Proc. Amer. Philos. 

 Soc. 49: 232-7. 1910.— Mem. Natl. Acad. Sci. 13: 12. 1913. 



