298 NOTES ON THE GENUS YUCCA. 
was fortunate enough last autumn to discover a specimen loaded with fruit, growing in the open ground in the 
Congressional garden at Washington. A photographic view was taken and specimens of the fruit and ripe seed [212] 
were gathered, which latter have already germinated. The fruit is a pendulous, dry, leathery, not-opening capsule 
or berry, of deep brown color, with (as the ovules, described p. 40, indicated) thin seeds ; the species therefore belongs 
to Clistoyucca, the character of which section will have to be slightly modified. Those botanists who described the 
fruit as pulpy must have confounded it with that of Y. aloifolia, as indeed seedsmen in Europe also have done, whose 
wrongly-named seeds, raised in Italy or Sicily, 1 have on page 40 erroneously described as those of Y. gloriosa, 
e best formed fruits seen by me were, before full maturity, 3 inches long, 1 inch in diameter, prismatic, 
cuspidate, the 3 wider sides forming the back of the carpels and opposite the outer segments of the flower, and 3 
alternate sides, corresponding to the commissures, only half as wide as the others, depressed and separated from the 
others by 6 prominent ridges. The fruit at this stage is altogether like a small fruit of the Y. aloifolia, only more 
pointed. At maturity its parenchyma dries up, the texture becomes leathery, and the markings less distinct. Fruits 
infested by larve are often smaller, constricted about the middle or variously twisted. In such fruits the rains of a 
wet autumn are apt to penetrate through openings made by the larve, and cause the germination of the seeds in the 
closed pod. — Seeds 7-8 mm. in the longest diameter, 1-1} mm. thick, with an entire albumen ; differing from the 
seeds of the capsular Yuccas only by the entire absence of a wing-margin. 
Page 41. Y. :ieeeer ae and Y. canaliculata are synonymous. If, as it is said, no sufficient character accom- 
panies. the name given by Carriére in 1858, and if the first description of Y. Treculiana was published by Herincq, 
1863, in the sede Frangais, then Hooker’s name of Y. canaliculata, published with tg and figure in 
1860, would have precedence. — Fruits lately obtained from Southwestern Texas are 3-4} inches long and 1-1} in 
diameter, pointed but scarcely rostrate, somewhat less distinctly six-angled than those of Y. aloifolia Seeds 7-8 mm. 
wide, 2-3 mm. thick, the smallest ones the thickest.— Yucca aspera, Regel, Gartenfl., is the same, to judge 
m a specimen cultivated here ; Y. gigantea, Lem. Rev. Hort. 9 (1860), p. 222, fide Beker Gard. Chron. : c., [213] 
would, from the size of the leaves (4} feet long), have to be referred here, if the leaves were not said to be 
fabs and shining. 
Page 47. The character of Clistoyucca is to be modified as follows: — 
Fructus indehiscens, pendulus (in altera specie erectus ?), demum siccatus ; semina tenuiora, plana, vix 
arginata, albumine integro. — Plante caulescentes, altera arborescens, panicula sessili vel pedunculata. 
* Folia serrulato-asperata. 
Yucca BREVIFOLIA, Engelm.: pericarp spongy (erect ?), seeds thicker. — Dr. Parry has just sent a specimen, 
which shows the panicle to be ovate, dense-flowered ; bracts wide and membranaceous, much like those of Y. T’recu- 
liana (as are also the flowers), the lower ones 2 inches wide, 3-4 inches long, tapering into a herbaceous serrulate 
point ; the upper ones 1 inch long, oblong obtuse, of thinner texture, white; segments of perigone 23-23 inches long, 
narrow ; ovary attenuated into a * ahort style, ovules 0.4mm. thick.—In Southern Utah in flower about the end 
of April. 
* * Folia margine integra, ete. 
mee GLoRiIosA, Linn.: pericarp leathery, pendulous ; seeds thinner. 
age 50. Y. constricta, Buckley, Proc. Phil. Ac., 1862, page 8, seems to belong to Y. angustifolia, var. elata, and 
a oe of European gardens to var. mollis of the same. 
Page 51. Y. filamentosa. Numerous specimens from South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, prove that the 
contracted, capsules, with nearly complete secondary dissepiments and large seeds. As thus the characters by which 
I have tried to distinguish the forma genwina prove to be uncertain, this arrangement of the different forms will have 
to be abandoned ; we may simply distinguish them as var. angusta (preferable to angustifolia on account of the species 
of that name), var. lata, etc. Y. filamentosa seems confined to the low country of the Southeastern States and not to 
penetrate into the interior more than perhaps 100 miles, while Y. gloriosa and Y. aloifolia appear to be stri trictly 
seaside plants. The westernmost specimens of Y. filamentosa I have seen came from the western border of [214] 
; but it is said to grow also in Mississippi and Louisiana. 
Var. flaccida: the contracted panicle i is usually shorter than the peduncular part of the scape. 
Var. levigata I have now also seen in cultivation, remarkable for the narrow, smooth, flaccid or even prostrate 
leaves ; the tall (6-9 feet high) scape purplish-brown ; the narrow panicle three times as long as wide, about as long 
as the peduncular part of the scape ; flowers and young fruit with purplish tinge; pens dissepiments of large 
capsule very incomplete, or almost wanting ; in the wild plant they are nearly perfect 
Page 54. ¥. Whipplei does not occur north of Monterey; it abounds near San Luis Obispo, whence Dr. W. Ww. 
Hays has sent seeds and living plants. 
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