firmly closed ; but now it begins to elongate and attains its func¬ 
tional maturity 48 hours after the anthers have opened, which 
by this time have mostly fallen off.* 
. The Agave flowers are odorous, some -of them, like A.Virgi- 
mca , of the sweetest fragrance, resembling tuberose, though not 
so overpowering ; others are more or less fetid. These odors are 
most fully developed, as is also the case in the tuberose, in the 
evening and at night, indicating undoubtedly the design of attract¬ 
ing vespertine insects to assist, in pollenization. But whether 
insects aid in this process, or the higher-placed flowers drop their 
pollen from the just bursting anthers on the opening stigmas of 
the lower and older, ones, has not been ascertained. 
The fruit is always an erect, dry, 3-celled capsule, globose or 
even depressed, or ovate, oblong and sometimes prismatic, ob¬ 
tuse at base or contracted into a sort of a stipe, obtusish at tip or 
acute or rostrate, opening above, generally about the upper third 
or half only. The numerous horizontal seeds are flat, black, 
semi-orbicular or obliquely orbicular with a shining or opaque 
surface, which, magnified 100 or 156 diameters, shows the epi¬ 
dermal cells flat and scarcely distinct from one another, or with 
distinct, somewhat elevated cell-walls; or they are slightly de¬ 
pressed, giving the seed a pitted appearance, or rarely elevated 
and tubercular. The areas of these cells are very minutely dotted 
or pitted. 
The filiform, cylindric, or slightly compressed embryo is as 
long as the hard, whitish, semi-transparent, farinaceous and oily 
albumen. In germination the seed-shell is elevated above the 
ground ort top of the largely developed foliaceous cotyledon, con¬ 
trary to the behavior pf Yucca, where the husk enclosing the 
small and soon decaying cotyledon remains buried in the ground. 
(See Notes on Yucca, 3, p. 20.) 
Some species bear no fruit, but, in place of the withered flower, • 
or probably in the axil of its bractlet, a bud or bulblet appears, 
which grows to a considerable size and will eventually sprout 
and propagate the plant. All the so-called viviparous Agaves 
cm 
23456 7 89 10 
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