Agave Xylonacantha.
xylonacantha

Description.

Single or cespitose, short-stemmed, openly spreading rosettes. Leaves 45 to 90 cm long , 5 to 10 cm wide, ensiform-lanceolate, broadest through the middle, long-acuminate, rather rigid, plane to concave above, explanate in shade, rounded below, green to yellowish green, sometimes glaucous, with or without pale center stripe; margin continously corneous, straight between remote prominent teats, but looping over the teats; teeth broadly flattened, thickly capping the broad teats, frequently 3 to 5 cuspid, commonly 2 to 5 cm apart, 8 to 15 mm long, light gray; spine 2.5 to 5 cm long, trigonous-subulate, stout, flat to slightly grooved above, keeled below.

Generally, it occupies the drier slopes and valleys of limestones on the desert side of the Sierra Madre Oriental, at elevations above 900 m. It is abundant on the limetone slopes

Agave xylonacantha is related to A. lophantha, its highly convoluted leaf margins with large flattened, multicuspid teeth being like an exaggeration of a character started by A. lophantha Indeed, some shade forms in the San Luis Potosi lowlands are difficult to designate as one or the other.

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