One of the most striking members of this collection of agaves 
is a large plant of the American century plant, Agave americana, 
which was presented to the Garden in 1901 by Mr. F. T. Holder. 
In its nine years at the Garden it has changed but little, pre- 
senting now about the appearance it did when first received. 
The leaves, as shown in the accompanying illustration, are long 
and arching, the larger ones measuring about six feet in length 
and four to five inches wide, with a thickness of three inches at 
the base, their thickest part. They are terminated with a stout 
spine about an inch long, and the margins are armed with short 
black teeth. At times the old decaying leaves have made the 
plant appear unsightly, and on several occasions, on this account, 
it was decided to remove it from the collections, but it was 
allowed to remain with the hope that it would bloom some day. 
This hope is now being realized, for late in April it was noticed 
that the center of the tuft of leaves was changing in appearance. 
A few days later the meaning of this changed appearance was 
evident, for the apex of a flowering stem emerged from the heart 
of the leaves. On April 28 the top of this stem was five feet 
seven inches above the tub in which the plant is growing. On 
May 12 its height was seven feet, five and a half inches, showing 
a growth of twenty-two and a half inches in two weeks, or an 
average of a little over one and a half inches per day. Some 
days this has grown but one half an inch, while on others its in- 
crease in height has been three inches, the differences being due 
largely to varying conditions of temperature and light. 
This is the largest century plant which has ever bloomed at 
the Garden, although other smaller ones have done so. One of 
these was the Vera Cruz century plant, Agave Vera- Crus, which 
was in blossom last summer; an account of this appeared in the 
JouRNAL for August of that year. Another was Queen Victoria’s 
century plant, Agave Victoriae-reginae, which flowered in the 
summer of 1906, a description of this occurring in the JOURNAL 
for July of the same year. 
The name ‘‘century plant” has been applied to these plants from 
the mistaken idea that they must be one hundred years old 
before blooming. This is evidently fallacious, for in a wild state 
