9. Yucca elata Engelm. Spanish Dagger. 1. _Yucca radiosa_ Trel. [Illustration: Fig. 114] Leaves 20′—30′ long, ¼′—½′ wide, rigid, gradually narrowed from the thin base, tapering toward the apex, or sometimes somewhat broadest at the middle, thin, flat on the upper surface, slightly thickened and rounded on the lower surface toward the base, smooth, pale yellow-green, with a slender stiff red-brown tip, and thickened entire pale margins soon splitting into long slender filaments. Flowers in May and June on slender spreading more or less recurved pedicels, in glabrous much-branched panicles 4°—6° long, raised on stout naked stem 3°—7° in length; perianth ovoid and acute in the bud, when fully expanded 3½′—4′ across, its segments united at the base into a short slender distinct tube, ovate or slightly obovate, those of the outer rank usually acute, not more than half as broad as those of the inner rank; stamens as long or a little longer than the ovary, with slender nearly terete filaments; ovary sessile, almost terete, pale green, abruptly contracted into the stout elongated style. Fruit an erect oblong capsule rounded and obtuse at the ends, tipped by a short stout mucro, conspicuously 3-ribbed, with rounded ridges on the back of the carpels, 1½′—2′ long, 1′—1½′ wide, with a thin firm light brown ligneous outer coat closely adherent to the lustrous light yellow inner coat, in ripening splitting from the top to the bottom between the carpels, and through their backs at the apex; seeds ⅓′ wide and about 1/32′ thick, with a smooth coat and a thin brittle wide margin to the rim. A tree, with a rough much-branched underground stem penetrating deep into the soil and a trunk often 15°—20° high and 7′—8′ in diameter, covered above with a thick thatch of the pendant dead leaves of many years, simple, or branched at the top with a few short stout branches densely covered with leaves at first erect, then spreading nearly at right angles, and finally pendulous. Bark dark brown, irregularly fissured, broken into thin plates, about ¼′ thick. Wood light, soft, spongy, pale brown or yellow. Distribution. High desert plateaus from southwestern Texas to southern Arizona; southward into northern Mexico; most abundant and of its largest size on the eastern slope of the continental divide in southern New Mexico and along the northern rim of the Tucson Desert in Arizona. Division II. Dicotyledons. Stems formed of bark, wood, or pith, and increasing by the addition of an annual layer of wood inside the bark. Parts of the flower mostly in 4’s and 5’s; embryo with a pair of opposite cotyledons. Leaves netted-veined. _Subdivision 1._ Apetalæ. Flowers without a corolla and sometimes without a calyx (with a corolla in _Olacaceæ_).