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’ and the West Indies,® 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’ 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 
8 Trelease, Rept. Mo. Bot. Gard. 22: 38-41. 1912. 
® Trelease, Memoirs Natl. Acad. Sci. 11: 6-11, ete. 1913. 
1© Trans. Acad. Sci. St. Louis: 18: 31. 1909—Proc. Amer. Philos. 
Soc. 49: 232-7. 1910.—Mem. Natl. Acad. Sci. 13: 12. 1913. 
