14 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ginate series, which brings this, the least of all agaves, close beside the 



greatest of its congeners, the gigan- 

 tic pulque magueys. It would be 

 surprising if, when its flowering is 

 made known, pumila were found to 

 develop a diminutive candelabrum 

 inflorescence; in fact, this is not to 

 be expected. A character shown by 

 this specimen and, so far as I 

 know, never before noted publicly, 

 is that the backs of its leaves are 

 finely lined with dark green on a 

 lighter background. Though gen- 

 eralizations are unsafe, I may say 

 that in the course of an exhaustive 

 study of all of the agaves that it has 

 come my way to see I have thus 

 far seen such lining only on littasas 

 of the horny-margined section, 

 like the lechuguilla — the marking 

 being due, in fact, to the develop- 

 ment of what may be called an emer- 

 gency water tissue on the lower 

 side of the leaves, the darker green 

 stripes marking points at which the 

 full chlorophyll-bearing tissue comes 

 out to the epidermis and the 

 water tissues developing more or less 

 chlorophyll according to differing 

 conditions of drought and exposure 

 to light. There is every reason to 

 believe, therefore, that when it flow- 

 ers Agave pumila will produce a 

 littaea spike and flowers similar to, 

 if not so large as, those of A. leche- 



l ?'MT\ ■■'»,'• ' guilla. 



^■^MiM^IJr i m¥: 9 '"f No agaves are known south of 



the isthmus of Panama except one of 

 the West Indian panicled series which 

 has developed in the Venezuelan 



fig. 15. the Lechuguilla. coast region, and a little-known 



plant of the Andes, near Lima, 

 which is evidently a littsea, though of a mezcal series, quite unrelated to 





