1881. ] : Sotol. : 873 
SOTOL, 
BY DR. V. HAVARD, U. S. ARMY. 
Name.—This interesting member of the Liliacee has been 
described under different names; it is the Dasylirton texanum 
Theele, of Watson’s “ Revision of the Liliacez,” and the Dasy- 
rion graminifolium Zucc., of Torrey’s Botany of the Mexican 
Boundary Survey. It appears to me that the D. wheelert Watson, 
may not be specifically distinct from it. 
Sotol is the Mexican name under which it is well known along 
the Upper Rio Grande, and bear-grass its common, meaningless 
Texan appellation. 
Description.—Perennial, characterized by a thick tuft or cluster 
of long, green, armed leaves, from the midst of which rises, 
periodically, a stout stem ten or twelve feet high, bearing a long, 
close panicle; caudex none or rarely, in old plants, six to eighteen 
inches high; leaves very numerous, roughly estimated at four or 
five hundred, erect in the center, thence gradually spreading to 
the ground, their expanded, white, ladle-shaped bases four or five 
inches long, three or four inches wide and two lines thick, ending 
rather abruptly into the long, narrow body of the leaf with which 
it contrasts sharply in color; at the point of transition is a pair of 
thin, coriaceous wings; leaf, exclusive of the base, three to four 
and a half feet long, seven to ten lines wide below, gradually 
tapering to a point which is split into coarse fibers; armed on 
both sides with teeth hooked downwards, very variable in shape, 
Size and relative distance mostly two lines long and six lines 
apart, often tinged with violet at apex or throughout; edges 
between the teeth finely serrated; panicle two or three feet long ; 
Partial ‘panicles three to four inches long, erect in the female 
Plant, flexuous and pendant in the male, subtended and often 
©vertopped by broad, lanceolate bracts; fertile racemes two to 
four, staminate racemes only one to two inches long; fruit three- 
Winged, broadly oval or subcordate, three lines long, on pedicels 
hardly one line long; the narrow wings less than one line wide, 
Sometimes free, generally more or less adnate to the style, straight 
md diverging but seldom rising above it; seed triangular pyram- 
idal with obtuse apex, 1 line long and broad, minutely rugulose 
under a lens; embryo slender, cylindrical, in the center of a 
horny albumen as long as the seed. 
