(_Agave victoriæ-reginæ_.)
This beautiful Agave is now in blossom in the garden here, and I am
happy to be able to send you photographs of it. This is the first time
it has ever blossomed in cultivation, and it has never been seen in
flower in a wild state. It is a mature native-grown specimen, dense in
habit, and perfectly semi-spherical in form, and the leaves are arranged
in spiral fashion with as much regularity as those of a screw pine. The
circumference of the plant is 5 ft. 1 in., and it has 268 leaves. Its
flower-stem appeared about the middle of June, grew rather fast till it
was 7 ft. high, then rather slowly till it reached its full development.
The scape is now 10 ft. 4 in. high above the plant, 6½ in. in
circumference at the base, or 5¼ in. at a foot above the base; from
there it tapers very gradually till near the apex. The flower-spike is
exceedingly dense, and 5 ft. 8 in. long; the lower or naked portion, 4
ft. 8 in. long, is prominently marked by abortive flower buds, with,
near the base, some bristle-like scales 3½ in. to 4 in. long. The
flowers are regularly arranged in parcels of three, all the three being
equal in size and opening together; they are greenish white in color, 1½
in. long, or, including the stamens, some 2¾ in. to 3 in. long.
[Illustration: AGAVE VICTORIÆ-REGINÆ.]
The first flowers opened on August 3, and they have continued to open
in succession, a belt about 3 in. wide opening each day. They remain in
good condition for two days; on the third day the stamens wilt and drop
down, but the pistil remains erect till the fourth day. On the first day
of opening the pistil is not so long as the stamens by ¾ in.; on the
second it has grown to be as long as the stamens, but it is not in
condition to receive the pollen till after noon of the second day.
Although the flowers on some eighteen inches of the spike have already
blossomed, none of the ovaries have been fertilized; they are dropping
off, but I am rather sanguine regarding those about the middle of the
spike. So great is the superfluity of nectar contained in the flowers,
that on the afternoon of the second day it often drops from the cups,
and the least shake to the scape brings it down in a shower. The main
beauty of the inflorescence consists in the dense bottle-brush-like mass
of bright yellow anthers. This plant, together with several smaller
ones, was contributed to this garden by Dr. Edward Palmer, who collected
them in their native wilds--the mountains of Northern Mexico--some three
years ago. He found them growing in a limited and rather inaccessible
locality in gravelly and rocky soil some miles from Monterey. In
addition to those he sent here he also sent a quantity to the garden of
the Agricultural Department at Washington, and some to Dr. Engelmann,
the eminent botanist at St. Louis. To Dr. Engelmann he also sent a piece
of an old flower stem and some dried capsules which he found upon an
old plant, and it was from these specimens in 1880 that the doctor
was enabled to describe for the first time the inflorescence of this
Agave.--_The Garden_.
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