IO 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fig. 8. A Wand-like Spike. 



characteristic of the Grand Canon, and a garden Littcea which many 

 years ago I named in commemoration of the accurate student of this 

 group of plants, Engelmann. 



Agave parviflora is clearly a Littcea, with its flowers rather loosely 

 disposed along the upper part of an inflorescence wand scarcely thicker 

 than a goose-quill, but its flowers by no means grow in pairs, though 

 each short main stalk forks at the beginning. On the contrary, 

 clusters of six or eight flowers — of which all but two or four commonly 

 fail to develop — are borne by its forked primary branches, a study of 

 which is capable of throwing much light on the reduced rather than 

 primitive typical twin flowers of the littaeas. 



As with all of the agaves that have been studied so far, this species 

 matures the stamens and pistils of a given flower at different times. 

 The flowers, which open early in the morning, quickly protrude their 

 stamens and shed their pollen immediately, but the style is then no 



