Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/447

Rh such as grew by a peon's hut in the village of Cedros, and one which was found on the plain near Symón was as grand a tree as an oak of two centuries and probably not much younger. This magnificent palma must have been close to forty feet in height, with a hundred branches which filled out the hemispherical top with symmetry and beauty. The trunk of this palma was near three feet in diameter four feet from the ground, and its thickened base below was not far from six feet across. The flower cluster of this plant is about three feet long and the creamy flowers which abound in June are much prized by the people as food. This plant also yields fiber, which, however, is not so generally used as that of its neighbor, owing doubtless to the abundance of the latter, which has longer and more accessible leaves. Some of the other desert plants less conspicuous than the Yuccas are hardly less interesting. In numbers the Maguey and its family outrank almost everything else. From Agave americana down to A. lechuguilla and Hechtia they are everywhere abundant. While the huge pulque maguey is found in this region at least only in cultivation, its lesser relatives are on a thousand hills, sometimes leaving little room for anything else to grow. Three species of Agave are abundant. Two of these, A. lechuguilla and A. falcata, are never found on the level plain, but as soon as one begins the ascent of the low ridges which rise but little above the valley he is almost sure to encounter A. lechtiguilla. We may say encounter advisedly, for their leaves are as so many daggers set at all angles to impale the unwary. The rigid leaves about a foot long are armed with terminal spines as sharp as needles and as strong as nails. These in places, especially on the low limestone ridges, are so numerous that one with difficulty can make his way through. In June this plant is at the height of its flowering season and over large areas the flowering shoots, ten to twelve feet tall, are everywhere conspicuous. The stems of last year have fallen, and the new ones soon ripen their seed and terminate the life of the plant. The leaves of this plant are especially valuable for fiber and it is one of the most important of native Mexican plants. From it the native also obtains amole, the short stem and leaf bases, which, when crushed, has marked saponaceous properties, and seems to justify the esteem in which it is held, if one may judge by results. A. falcata occupies the slopes of the ridges, but is rare as compared with A. lechuguilla. Its flower stalk is smaller on the whole than that of its neighbor and its flowers much darker colored. Its sickle-shaped leaves are pointed inward and it is, therefore, not nearly so unpleasant to meet as Lechuguilla. But its fiber is little used, probably owing to the scarcity of the plant and the great abundance of the other species which is more easily worked.

Agave asperrima is one of the plants which the traveler first notices in the desert of Zacatecas. Its bluish-green leaves are usually less than three feet in length as it grows in the desert, but are sharply armed