The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 78: January to June, 1911 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 78: January to June, 1911

J. C. Blumer collected it in the same region; and this season when Mr. James H. Ferriss found it in the Guija Mountains. The little plant here illustrated is the one sent in by Mr. Blumer, which in transit had begun to develop a flower stem and which, flowering in May of last year and fruiting in the following summer, has given the first oppor tunity for a botanist to observe these phenomena and to see in perfec tion its diminutive flowers which, scarcely three quarters of an inch long, led its describer, Dr. Torrey, to name it Agave parviflora.

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Excerpt from The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 78: January to June, 1911

In the popular mind the idea of a century plant also includes the enormous species grown for pulque on the elevated plains to the south of the City of Mexico, and even larger plants of the same type, each of them reaching the weight of a ton or more, and sometimes producing a flower stalk nearly as thick as a man's body. In this sense, then, the name century plant becomes nearly equivalent to the Haitian name maguey, as now applied in Mexico. where the Spaniards introduced it in place of the Aztec name for these plants - metl. My use of the word, then, is rather as an equivalent of the botanist's generic name, Agave, than of this particular designation of a part of its species.

A comparative notion of the size of these giants of the genus and its pygmies, with which I am here concerned, is afforded by a photograph of the latter, taken by the side of two of the fruiting branches of a mammoth West Indian species which I have hanging to a chimney breast in my study. The larger of these dwarfs is no larger than one's fist, and the smaller scarcely equals the seed-vessel of a great maguey.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.