March ii, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



103 



Pines, we are confronted by lava-beds covering the moun- 

 tain-side and spreading for miles over the valley at its 

 foot, a wild waste, almost impassable even on foot, 

 black, brown or red rock, but half-concealed by vegeta- 

 tion. Down the slope innumerable streams of molten 

 lava once poured, crowding upon and overrunning each 

 other, heaping up ridges and hillocks or plowing out chan- 

 nels, seething and swirling, and, as they cooled, cracking 

 into chasms, or, by upheavals of crust, forming frequent 

 little grottoes. Right over this pedrigal, through devious 

 loops and up toilsome grades, our train mounts to the sum- 

 mit of the Sierra. To scan the scenes through which we 

 pass yields intense interest. This pedrigal is seen to be a 

 preserve of plants from far and near. For beauty, it is like 

 a flower garden. From nooks and crannies of the rough 

 rocks, or from open patches amid masses of lava, spring 

 Dahlias and Begonias, Senecios and Stevias, Pentstemons 

 and Salvias, flowering shrubs and flowering trees — blooms 

 in every color to make the scene bright and pleasing. 

 On driest crags stand great Cotyledons and Sedums, and 

 in the partial shade of little grots rugged walls are 

 softened by delicate Ferns. Thus, on a gigantic scale, nature 

 has here wrought at wild gardening with surpassing 

 results. One catches glimpses of a thousand pieces of rock 

 work which the gardener would covet and long to trans- 

 port to his city parks. Higher up the scene changes for a 

 brief space to one of extreme desolation, where fragments 

 of lichened rock strew the slope. Then, as we near the 

 summit over such open slopes, our eyes turn to survey the 

 Valley of Mexico, that wonderful valley, in the praise of 

 whose beauty and grandeur the Spaniard exhausted the 

 riches of his language. No better point of observation 

 could be chosen. We are some 2,000 feet higher than the 

 level of the valley, and are here sitting at our ease in a 

 railway train. Nothing obstructs our view of the entire 

 valley some fifty miles in breadth. We look down upon 

 the great city in its midst, with its two hundred towers and 

 domes ; see the causeways, marked by bordering lines of 

 Willows and Australian Gum-trees, which radiate from it 

 across green meadows ; count scores of villages nestling 

 amid greenery and shade, and trace the shining lakes, 

 white-rimmed by bare alkaline flats. We follow the com- 

 plete circle of mountains which embrace this valley. Over 

 against us in the south-east, and seemingly face to face with 

 us at this height, dominating all the circle, stand the two 

 great snowy mountains which are the crown of all the 

 scene. 



Crashing through rock-cuts on the verge of the summit 

 we are swiftly borne into a thin forest of Pinus Monte- 

 zumae, with scattered lines of Cupressus Benthami along 

 watercourses, then out over open grass lands, broken by 

 fields of Wheat, Barley and Potatoes, and on among abrupt 

 knobs of volcanic rock, with Juniperus tetragona finding 

 congenial conditions in their scanty soil. A mile or two 

 away on our right the bare peak of Ajusco rises some 

 3,000 feet above us ; and nearer on our left are several 

 prominent ' summits of rounded outline. Below us and 

 near we mark a minor crater like those strewn eastward 

 over the valley, a depressed cone of regular form and show- 

 ing a sunken top. After a dozen miles of this mountain 

 plateau, called the Serrano de Ajusco, we enter near its 

 southern border a heavier forest of Pinus Montezumae. 

 This forest extends far down the southern slope of the 

 mountain, but other species of trees gradually take the place 

 of the Pine. 



Cuernavaca is situated at the foot of the southern slope 

 of Ajusco, where the cold storms which sweep the Gulf 

 coast in winter can hardly gain access ; hence it enjoys 

 the perfection of a winter climate. Fields of tender vege- 

 tables, like tomatoes and squashes, planted in November 

 for fruiting in winter, attest the absence of frost. Its sum- 

 mer climate is also agreeable, for its elevation of 5,oco feet 

 above sea-level precludes oppressive heat. Moreover, the 

 rain is said to fall here mostly by night. From this point 

 one has a nearer view than from the City of Mexico of the 



great snowy summits rising above forested slopes ; and 

 here the interest of the view is greatly enhanced by the 

 striking contrast afforded by an intermediate range of bare 

 red rock, disordered masses, serrated, castellated and 

 pinnacled beyond description. Above and about the town 

 the mountain side is furrowed by many ravines so deep 

 as to receive the name of barrancas. Below the town 

 these open out into a wide valley which is green through- 

 out the year with plantations of cane. Streams of pure 

 water course down through every street, and fountains are 

 frequent. To this charming spot Cortez came to build his 

 palace and enjoy the fruits of his conquest; to this quaint 

 and quiet town, verdant and shady under bright, warm 

 skies, was attracted the ill-fated Maximilian to make him- 

 self a secluded home, and hither he was wont to ride by 

 night to hide from assassins in the thick wood of his high- 

 walled garden. 



The several barrancas of this neighborhood, with their 

 brooks and waterfalls, their thickets of shrubs, their cliffs 

 and bluffs, shaded or exposed, dry or wet, and the swampy 

 meadows at their bottom offered me a field for botanizing 

 which I have not seen excelled. The mountain woods 

 more distant were hardly less inviting. The character of 

 its plants indicates that this region belongs to the same 

 floral zone as Oaxaca and Guadalajara, and I detected here 

 twenty-five or more species which have been late dis- 

 coveries in those fields. This fact may indicate that the 

 botanists, Bourgeau and Bilimek, who followed Maxi- 

 milian here, shared their master's fear, for these plants 

 were growing within easy distance from the city; but, 

 better than that, this district was still treasuring its own 

 quota of undescribed plants to reward my eager search. 

 The most conspicuous among the new plants found about 

 Cuernavaca is Lippia iodantha, Rob. and Greenm. (see fig. 

 on page 105), a shrub five to ten feet in height. Its small, 

 yellow flowers are borne in purple bracted heads nearly 

 an inch in diameter, and these profusely cover the branches 

 of the plant, making it a lovely object through many weeks 

 of the autumn. _ _ _. . 



Charlotte, Vt. C. G. Priflgk. 



Notes on the Names of Yuccas. 



FOR many years after their discovery by the botanists 

 of the commission which established the boundary 

 between the United States and Mexico, at the close of the 

 Mexican war, misapprehension as to the specific rank and 

 distribution of the baccate-fruited Yuccas of our southern 

 territory existed, all the early collections being extremely 

 meagre and unsatisfactory. 



The first species of this group which was described is 

 Yucca baccata (Torrey, Bol. Mex. Bound. Surv. [1859] ). 

 It is a plant with a short subterranean stem, or with a stem 

 lying prostrate on the surface of the ground, glaucous con- 

 cave leaves much roughened on the back, flowers often 

 more than four inches in length— that is considerably 

 longer than those of any other Yucca now known, and 

 succulent black fruits furnished at the apex with short beaks. 

 Yucca baccata inhabits arid plains and valleys in southern 

 Colorado and Utah, and northern New Mexico and Arizona, 

 and apparently never forms an upright stem or descends 

 from the high Colorado plateau into the southern deserts. 

 It was first collected by Dr. J. M. Bigelow in New Mexico, 

 and the earliest mention of itis on page 147 of the fourth vol- 

 ume of the Pacific Railroad Reports. When Torrey described 

 his Yucca baccata a few years later in the Mexican Boun- 

 dary Report, he referred to it a Yucca which had been 

 collected by Thurber, near Parras, in Cohahuila, and sug- 

 gested the varietal name of Macrocarpa for a large arbo- 

 rescent Yucca which Dr. Bigelow had found on the plains 

 of western Texas, alluding at the same time to a Yucca 

 which Dr. Parry had gathered near Monterey, in California. 



Dr. Fngelmann, in his studies of Yucca, published in 

 1873 in the third volume of the Transactions of the St. Louis 

 Academy, in which the characters of the genus and its nat- 

 ural sections are established, considered the Parras plant 



