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ADDISONIA 1 
(Plate 41) 
NOLINA TEXANA 
Devil’s-shoestring 
Native of southern and western Texas 
Family DRACAENACEAE Yucca Family 
Nolina texana S. Wats. Proc. Am. Acad. 14: 248. 1879. 
Beaucarnea texana Baker, Jour. Linn. Soc. 18: 236. 1880, 
A plant with a stout rootstock and a short caudex on which many 
leaves are crowded. ‘The leaves are greatly elongate, bright-green 
and shining, and in the wild state lie procumbent on the ground, 
thus form eta a mat about the plant; their dilated bases are two 
inches long or less and closely imbricate, the outer ones thick, 
yellowists ‘and abruptly dasedwea into the blade, while the inner 
are often a yard long and taper from about one fifth of an inch 
wide at the base to a very slender tip; they are striate on both sides, 
half-round below and triquetrous toward the apex; the edges are 
usually decidedly roughened. ‘The flowering stem arises from the 
caudex and is surrounded at the base by the cluster of Bape 
During the flowering period it is much shoetee than the leaves and 
even in fruit when it lengthens it rarely exceeds them. ves pe- 
duncle is very short and the internodes of the flowering stem are 
only about an inch “bas: The bracts subtending the iors “ 
lateral panicles of the inflorescence have broad een -mar 
anthers are shorter than the Ferien The ovary is ovoid, white 
or greenish-white, and is tipped with three short-subulate styles. 
The capsule is depressed, and usually about one sixth of an inch long. 
This plant was first collected on the Cibolo River, a tributary of 
the San Antonio River, in May, 1846, by Ferdinand Lindheimer. 
For a period of over thirty years it was referred to species to which 
it was not closely related, and not until 1879 did it find a place in 
