Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/448

444

with stout spines both terminal and lateral, which make them formidable objects to meet. These plants spread by stolons and form impenetrable masses where they monopolize the ground. This agave grows in greatest abundance on the plain, where it frequently impedes the progress of a horseman quite effectually. It also spreads upward on the ridges and in the canons to points a thousand feet above the plain. Its flowering season is in June, though it loiters along in this business through the whole summer. The flowering shoot is similar to that of A. americana, but hardly exceeds fifteen feet in height. But these great flowering shoots are of great interest in their strength and beauty, looming up against the sky on the crest of some ridge, and not the least in the fact that this huge inflorescence represents the culminating vital activity of the whole life of the plant. Slowly through the years the materials have been gathering for this particular task, and finally in a few short weeks of summer the supreme work is consummated, and the great candelabrum of branches stands forth with its hundreds of seed capsules, while the erstwhile luxuriant leaves are sere and withered, their substance, as indeed the whole life of the plant, sacrificed to this one supreme effort toward the propagation of its kind. When in bloom the inflorescence is surrounded by myriads of flies and other insects attracted by the abundant nectar which the flowers secrete. These flowers in press, if not killed, continue for days to produce the viscid sweetish fluid which the natives collect and call miél or honey. When the seeds are ripe the pod splits down from above