THE EASTER LILY’S DESERT COUSIN 
various trade-marks of the lily family are written all 
over it. 
Yet there in the desert it grows differently from other 
lilies. Its cousins are small plants whose tops die down 
in the winter time. But the yucca converts its leaves 
into many daggers that make it a plant hedgehog, diffi¬ 
cult to attack. These may sit flat on the ground or, in 
some varieties, may cluster at the top of a stalk as high as 
a man on horseback. They may be almost tree-like and 
go on living for many years. 
Then at blossom time there emerges from this rosette 
of dagger-tipped leaves a tall stalk that may reach ten 
or twenty feet into the desert sunshine. Having got its 
growth, this stalk puts forth a cluster of buds as big as a 
bushel basket. Time opens up these buds, and the re¬ 
sult is a group of bell-like lilies, strangely like magnified 
specimens of Solomon’s seal and richly perfumed like that 
other tiny cousin, the lily-of-the-valley. But such a clus¬ 
ter of these lilies it is that the yucca yields! Any single 
bloom would win it a place of distinction as a producer of 
lilies, but it groups scores of its flowers together as though 
it were expecting some great giantess to come that way 
to gather herself a party bouquet. 
97 
