Description.
Solitary open rosettes up to 1.2m tall, 1.2 m wide, rigid pale green to light glaucous green leaves up to 75cm long usually narrowed above the base, lanceolate, long-acuminate, guttered, thick at base, convex below, the margins nearly straight or undulate with or without small teatlike bases under closely set, regular, slender teeth, which are variously flexed, smaller teeth sometimes between the larger. Spine 3-6 cm long, shortly and openly grooved above the base, red-brownto brown to aging to grey. Cultivated plants tend to offset when young.
A plant of the oak woodland and grama grassland. It shows good development on the limestone slopes at altitudes and in the granite of Texas Canyon in Arizona. A smaller form occurs in Northern Sonora.
Characteristics of the species are the long lance shaped leaf and its close set slender teeth, sometimes with smaller ones in between.
