The New Student's Reference Work/Agave

AGAVE

Agave (ā-gā′vē). A genus of plants of the amaryllis family, whose numerous species are peculiar to the warm and dry regions of America. Along with forms of cactus and yucca, agave forms the characteristic American desert vegetation. One of the species, the American aloe, has received the fanciful name of Century Plant, from the mistaken notion that it must be a hundred years old before it blooms.

It is a native of Mexico and Central America. In native soils the plant usually blooms in its seventh or eighth year, but in hothouses it rarely blooms until it is from 40 to 60 years old; whence arises the story that they flower only once in a hundred years. After flowering the plant dies down to the ground and new plants spring up from the roots. It has no stem proper, or a very short one, bearing a crowded head of large fleshy leaves, which are spiny at the edge. From the midst of these shoots up the straight, upright scape, 24 to 36 feet high, and at the base frequently a foot through, along which are lance-like flower branches, ending in clusters of blossoms often numbering 4,000 flowers.

Although agaves are decorative plants in the United States and Europe, in their native home in Mexico they are among the most useful plants. There they are called maguey, and are a regular farm crop and valued highly. Some of the species supply fiber which is used in making rope, cordage, matting, clothing, thread, hammocks, bagging, burlap and other coarse textile stuffs, and the old Mexicans used it to make a coarse paper. Its introduction on our arid western plains is highly recommended, for it will grow-in the dry lands of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California. When pasturage is scarce the leaves are cut up and fed to cattle. From some of the species soap is made, while the two most common Mexican drinks, pulque and mescal, are obtained from still others. When the young flower-bud is cut out, the sap keeps on flowing into the cavity. This juice is quite sweet. It is gathered daily and fermented, and becomes the great Mexican drink known as pulque. It is milky, sour and bad smelling, looking like thin buttermilk, and has a rank taste; yet even Americans soon find it agreeable and refreshing. A distilled liquor is also made from it. The unfermented maguey, called honey-water, is used as a substitute for milk.