TEE SMALLEST OF THE CENTURY PLANTS 



1 



countries, even when protected against the winter, literally takes the 

 larger part of a century for its development. In the popular mind the 

 idea of a century plant also includes the enormous species grown for 

 pulque on the elevated plains to 

 the south of the City of Mexico, 

 and even larger plants of the same 

 type, each of them reaching the 

 weight of a ton or more, and 

 sometimes producing a flower 

 stalk nearly as thick as a man's 

 body. In this sense, then, the 

 name century plant becomes nearly 

 equivalent to the Haitian name 

 maguey, as now applied in Mex- 

 ico, where the Spaniards intro- 

 duced it in place of the Aztec 

 name for these plants — metl. My 

 use of the word, then, is rather 

 as an equivalent of the botanist's 

 generic name, Agave, than of this 

 particular designation of a part of 

 its species. 



A comparative notion of the size 

 of these giants of the genus and 

 its pygmies, with which I am here concerned, is afforded by a photo- 

 graph of the latter, taken by the side of two of the fruiting branches 

 of a mammoth West Indian species which I have hanging to a chimney 



breast in my study. The larger of these 

 dwarfs is no larger than one's fist, and 

 the smaller scarcely equals the seed-ves- 

 sel of a great maguey. 



The larger of these species was first 

 discovered by the international survey 

 of the boundary between Arizona and 

 Sonora, more than half a century ago, 

 and although it is abundant on the 

 ragged mountains of the boundary re- 

 gion, it has been collected very few times 

 so far as yet known, since then: ten 

 years ago near the one hundred and 

 twenty-ninth boundary monument in the 

 Pajarito Mountains by myself when 

 I was looking up typical material of some of the species first made 

 known through the International Boundary Survey; last year when 



Pig. 4. Giants and Pygmies. 



Fig. 5. 



Scarcely equals a Seed 

 Vessel. 



