ADDISONIA 67 
(Plate 34) 
AGAVE SUBSIMPLEX 
Seal Island Maguey 
Native of Seal Island, Gulf of California 
Family AMARYLLIDACEAE AMARYLLIS Family 
Agave subsimplex Trelease, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. 22: 60. pl. 63, 64. 1911. 
A rather small glabrous perennial with very tough and fleshy 
leaves crowded over a short thick trunk and persisting until flower- 
ing time. The leaves are broadly oblong, about two inches wide 
and five inches long, smooth, and very glaucous but marked by 
seetonel greene FG across eles back; they are gradually nar- 
rowed to an abriipt hard strong very sharp gray spine three- 
quarters of an inch long, and their margins are deeply re repand at 
intervals of mies ut half an inch, each of the fleshy prominences 
from yellow, red, or purple into a dull gray as it matur Afte 
several years of va Seat a slender scape two t ote feet Sacer 
develops, bearing a few scattered bracts which pass into the leaves 
below by a gradual api and become much smaller and 
thinner above. From the axils of a few of the upper bracts short 
branches develop and. ae in several flowers each, or the flowers 
are nearly sessile and reduced to two above each bract. The 
ra rs are greenish see aes about an inch long, with six nearly 
distinct and similar perianti- -segments arising from the summit of 
an oblong ovary half an inch long. ‘The six claret-colored fila- 
me borne in the very short tube of the perianth, and are 
nearly an inch long, each t a in a short versatile yellow 
anther. ‘The fruit is a loculicidal three-celled oblong woody capsule 
about two inches and a half long, narrowed into a stipe at its base, 
and each cell contains many thin flat black seeds in two rows. 
Agave subsimplex is one of a group of small maguey or mescal 
species that occur in the desert region of the Colorado river and 
the adjoining parts of continental and peninsular Mexico. It was 
collected in fruit by J. N. Rose, and was described originally from 
this material. With the herbarium specimens, small living plants 
were brought in, and it is one of these, which flowered in the New 
York Botanical Garden, that is figured on the accompanying plate 
and has furnished material for the description of the flowers. 
The genus Agave, as it is limited by botanists today, comprises 
two types. The usually broad-leaved species that bear their 
flowers in an ample Pens of whi “century plant” of 
greenhouses and the “ pulque magueys” of Mexico are examples, 
