io4 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 420. 



of Thurber and the western Texas plant of Bigelow identi- 

 cal, and southern or arborescent forms of the stemless Yucca 

 baccata (Yucca baccata, /? australis) connected with that 

 species by Parry's California plant. 



In the spring- of 1887 I was in Nuovo Leon and was able 

 to establish the fact that the flower panicles of the large 

 arborescent Yucca of that part of Mexico are pendulous 

 (Garden and Forest, i., 78, fig. 13-14), a character peculiar, 

 so far as is now known, to this tree ; and that it had been 

 described in 1873 from young plants in European gardens 

 as Yucca filifera. It is this species, as shown by Thurber's 

 specimen (No. 1857) in the herbarium of Columbia College, 

 which appears in a picture on page 490 of the second vol- 

 ume of the Personal Narrative of the American Boundary 

 Commission, where a wide-branched tree bears numerous 

 erect panicles of flowers which display the zeal rather than 

 the accuracy of the artist. 



These erect panicles of the artist's imagination caused 

 some confusion in Professor Trelease's paper on Yucca in 

 the Fourth Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden, in which 

 he recognizes the fact that the Yucca of the plains of west- 

 ern Texas is a distinct species for which he proposed the 

 name of Yucca australis, joining with it, however, Thur- 

 ber's Parras tree, which he recognized as distinct from 

 Yucca filifera, the name proposed in an earlier paper for 

 the Nuovo Leon, Parras and western Texas plants. 



This arboresent Yucca of western Texas, which is the 

 largest Yucca of the United States, is quite distinct from the 

 stemless Yucca baccata, not only in habit and size, but in 

 the color, shape and smoothness of the leaves and the 

 character of their fibrous margins, the long pendulous 

 branches of the panicles of flowers, which were well 

 shown in the illustration in our last volume (p. 415); in 

 the size and shape of the flowers and the size of the fruit. 

 This plant having been first described as Yucca baccata, 

 var. macrocarpa, should when raised to a species bear the 

 name of Yucca macrocarpa, which I now propose for it.* 



The confusion with the name Yucca macrocarpa is in- 

 creased by the fact that in 1881 Engelmann gave it to an 

 arborescent Yucca of the mountains of southern Arizona, 

 which in 1S73 he had described as Yucca Schottii, under 

 the impression that the two plants were distinct, a view 

 which the abundant material collected during the last few 

 years shows to have been erroneous. 



The synonymy of Yuccas has been further compli- 

 cated by the use of the specific name, macrocarpa, 

 for the Yucca found by Parry near Monterey, California, 

 and always considered identical with Torrey's Yucca 

 baccata until the naturalists of the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture connected with the Death Valley 

 Expedition showed it to be distinct, and called it Yucca 

 macrocarpa in the belief that it might be the same plant as 

 Torrey's Yucca baccata, var. macrocarpa, of western 

 Texas. 



The habit of this southern California Yucca, the color, 

 surface and margins of its leaves, and the size of its flow- 

 ers abundantly distinguish it from the stemless Yucca bac- 

 cata of Torrey and from Yucca macrocarpa of Texas. It 

 is without a name, and I propose to call it Yucca Mohaven- 

 sis,f as it is most abundant and grows to its largest size on 

 the Mohave Desert, this, too, being the name which Dr. 

 Coville, the botanist of the Death Valley Expedition, gave 

 it in his manuscript notes of the expedition. C. S. S. 



* The synonymy of this plant would be then : 

 Yucca macrocarpa. 



Yucca baccata. var. macrocarpa, Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound, Sun/., 222 (1858). 

 Yucca baccata, /i australis, Engelmann, Trans. St. Low's Acad., iii., 44 (in part) 



(1873). 



Yucca baccata, Sargent, Forest Trees North Am. 10th Census U. S.,ix., 219 (in 

 part) (1884). 



Yucca filifera, Trelease, Rep. Missouri Bot. Cart/., iii , 162 (in part) (notChabaud) 

 (1892). 



Yucca australis, Trelease, I. c, iv., 190 (in part) (1S93). 



t Yucca Mohavensis 



Yucca filamentosa, ? Wood, Proc. Phil. Acad , 1868, 167 (not Linnaeus). 



Yucca baccata, Engelmann, /. c. (in part) (not Torrey) (1873). Trelease, Rep. 

 Missouri Bot. Card., iv., 1S5. 



Yucca macrocapa, Merriam, North Ameri.no Fauna, No. 7, 358, t. 14 {Death 

 Valley Exped., ii.) (not Yucca baccata, var. macrocarpa, Torrey, nor Yucca macro- 

 carpa, Engelmann) (1893). 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



Dendrobium sarmentosum. — This is a new species allied 

 to Dendrobium barbatulum and lately named by Mr. Rolfe 

 from specimens now flowering at Kew and which were 

 received from Burma. It forms an erect cluster of crowded 

 proliferous, slender pseudo-bulbs, eighteen inches high, with 

 deciduous leaves and axillary flowers, usually in pairs and 

 developed freely by the last matured growth. The flowers 

 are only about an inch across, white, with a yellow stain 

 on the front of the labellum, and a few thin lines of red on 

 the side lobes. A well-flowered specimen is attractive as a 

 flowering plant, but its chief charm is in its powerful violet- 

 like odor. Messrs. Low & Co., of Clapton, also lately 

 imported this species from Burma, and they exhibited it in 

 flower last week under the name of D. fragrans. This, 

 D. aureum, D. luteolum and D. Kingianum are worth a 

 place in every collection of tropical Orchids on account of 

 the sweet perfume of their flowers. They all flower in 

 winter, examples of them being in flower now at Kew. 



Dendrobiubi Curtisii, a hybrid between D. aureum and 

 D. Cassiope, raised by Messrs. F. Sander & Co. , resembles 

 D. endocharis, but promises to be stronger and more florif- 

 erous. Its pseudo-bulbs are from six to twelve inches long 

 and bear numerous flowers two inches in diameter, white, 

 with a dull crimson blotch on the base of the lip. 



Dendrobium pallens, a new hybrid between D. Findlay- 

 anum and D. Ainsworthii, raised in the garden of Sir 

 Trevor Lawrence, is a beautiful addition to the numerous 

 hybrid Dendrobes now in cultivation. Its flowers are 

 large, white, faintly tinted with rose, the long cordate lip 

 having a blotch of pale yellow in front. It is very free and 

 appears to be a vigorous grower. A certificate was 

 awarded to it. 



Dendrobium Burfordiense, a hybrid between D. aureum 

 and D. Linawianum, raised in 1892 by SirTrevor Lawrence, 

 was exhibited splendidly in flowerby him last week. It has 

 flowers as large as a good variety of D. nobile and colored 

 pale rosy mauve tinged with yellow, the odor being equal 

 to that of D. aureum. This is another hybrid that deserves 

 to rank with the best of garden Orchids. 



Odontoglossum retusum. — One of the most interesting of 

 the many rare Orchids shown at the meeting of the Royal 

 Plorticultural Society held last week was a plant of this 

 Odontoglossum from the collection of Mr. Woodall, Scar- 

 borough, who has had the plant many years and finds it is 

 happiest when grown quite cool. Sir Trevor Lawrence 

 possesses a plant of it, and these two are the only examples 

 known. It has the pseudo-bulbs and habit of a Cochlioda, 

 to which it is evidently closely allied, but it differs from the 

 several garden representatives of that genus in the stout- 

 ness, length, branching and number of flowers upon its 

 scape. This in Mr. Woddall's plant was twisted several 

 times around stakes, and it bore at least one hundred flow- 

 ers as large as those of Cochlioda Noetzliana, their" color 

 being rich orange shaded with crimson. O. retusum was 

 described by Lindley from a specimen collected by Hart- 

 weg on the mountains of Saraguro, Peru. 



Houlletia tigrina. — A plant in flower of this rare species 

 was shown last week by the Hon. Walter Rothschild. It 

 was first described about forty years ago by Lindley from 

 specimens imported and flowered by Monsieur Linden, 

 whose collector, Schlim, found it in Ocana, Colombia, at 

 an elevation of 4,800 feet. I have never seen it in flower 

 before. The plant shown had broad, plaited, erect leaves 

 nearly two feet long and bore two short erect scapes, one 

 with two, the other with four flowers, each of which was 

 four inches in diameter, the sepals ovate, concave, straw- 

 colored, with dull rose spots and reticulations, the petals 

 smaller, acute, with a lobe on each side and colored like 

 the sepals, and the singularly formed, fleshy two-horned 

 lip white, spotted with crimson. Although not so attrac- 

 tive as Houlletia Brocklehurstiana, it is as good a garden 

 Orchid as the other half-dozen species of Houlletia known, 



