78 



Garden and Forest. 



[April ii, 



New or Little Known Plants. 



Yucca tilifera. 



THIS, the "Pitlnia" (if the Mexicans of Nuevo Leon, 

 and the larg-est of the known species of Yucca, is 

 certainly one of the most remarkable and interesting trees 

 of North America. It was first discovered about 1S40, near 

 Saltillo in north-eastern Me.xico, by Dr. J. Gregg, author of 

 the well known "Commerce of the Prairies." It was next 

 seen in December, 1852, between Parras and Saltillo, by 

 Dr. George Thurber and a party of the United States Boundary 

 Commission, and is referred to, but w'ithout characters or 

 description, in Dr. Torrey's "Botany of the Boundar}'. " A 

 figure of the tree, however, appeared in Mr. Bartlett's "Per- 

 sonal Narratives " of the Boundary Surveys, vol. ii., p. 491. 



by whom jslants were raised and distributed. One of these 

 flowered in 1876, in the garden of the Baron Frailly, near 

 Hyeres, and was figured and described by Chabaud in the 

 Rei'iie Horlicole, under the not very fortunate name of 

 I'ucca filifera*-, by which this tree must now^ be known. 



Yucca fi lifer a is a wide-branching_tree often 50 feet in 

 height. The short trunk, 15-20 feet "high in fully grown 

 specimens, and not rarely five feet in diameter above the 

 somewhat swollen base, is covered with dark brown scaly 

 bark. The leaves, persistent upon the stout branches for 

 many years, are thin, smooth, narrowly oblanceolate, 

 18-20 inches long, with fibrous edges, the threads white, 

 or sometimes reddish-brown. The pendulous panicles 

 appear in April and May ; they are 4-6 feet long and 18-20 

 inches wide. The flowers are small, 2-3 inches wide, 

 the ovate, or lance-ovate, narrow segments rarely exceed- 



r^ 



1> -^fij/f ~y ^ ,W( r^y%^/ ^ /tr^/t 



Fig. 



This figure very well shows its habit except that the great 

 panicles of flowers are represented upright on the summit 

 of the branches as in other species of Yucca, an error due, 

 no doubt, to the fact that the trees, being at that season of 

 the year out of flower, the artist was obliged to draw upon 

 his imagination so far as the inflorescence was concerned. 

 This mistake led Dr. Engelmann, with only the very in- 

 sufficient material brought home by Gregg and Thurber at 

 his command, and after him Mr. Baker in England, to con- 

 sider the plant a southern variety of V.' bacaila, from 

 which, however, it differs in its much thinner and 

 smoother leaves, smaller flowers, shorter and less fleshy 

 fruit, and pendulous inflorescence. Some time previous to 

 i860, the collector Roezl rediscovered the tree, and sent 

 seeds to the nurseries of Huber A Co., of Hveres, in France, 



ing- an inch in length. The baccate pendulous fruit, often 

 constricted on the side towards the stem, is 2-21^ inches 

 long, with seed often exceeding a line in thickness. 



Yucca filifera is a conspicuous object on the arid plains 

 which rise from the Rio Grande to the foothills of the 

 Sierra Madre. The great panicles of white flowers can be 

 seen for miles in the clear atmosphere of that region, and 

 look like gleaming waterfalls pouring out from the ends of 

 the branches. It first appears about 50 miles south of the 

 Rio Grande, where, with the beautiful white-flowered 

 Cordia Boissieri m the depression of the plain, it forms an 

 open picturesque forest which extends almost to the valley 



* J «iTrt Jili/ero, Cliabaud, RezK Hort., 1S76, p. 432. f. 971.- 



p. 262. 



J', baccata, vnr. australis, Eiiijelin. 

 Jour, Lfnn. Sof. xz'iii, 22g. 



-Carriere, Rez' Hort., 1879, 

 St, Louis Acad. Hi. 43. — Baker, 



