THE CENTURY PLANT 



225 



more commonly, rootstocks of the so-called herbaceous species, for use as 

 vegetable soap; the claim has recently been made that the sap from 

 henequen leaves in process of cleaning can be converted into a valuable 

 glue; and from the time of the Aztecs innumerable domestic uses have 

 been found for one part or another of these interesting plants. 



So far as inference may go, it was none of the agaves of the earlier 

 discovered West Indies or Yucatan which was first taken across the 

 water, in small specimens for gardeners to care for and grow into some 

 semblance to their native form and size, but one or more species from 

 Mexico proper, to illustrate the wonderful ' metl ' of that land. The 

 importation may have been made very soon after the conquest of Mexico 

 by Cortez, but I find no record concerning it. It is even questionable 

 what species was actually first taken over. The first tangible record of 

 an Agave in Europe is given by 

 Clusius, a Belgian botanist who, 

 traveling through Spain somewhat 

 more than a generation after the 

 conquest of Mexico, found an aloe 

 of this kind sparingly cultivated at 

 Valencia, where he obtained off- 

 sets which he took home, and one 

 of which he figured in 1576. 

 While this first picture probably 

 represents A. Americana, as it is 

 usually supposed to do, it must be 

 admitted that it resembles also 

 the common pulque maguey of 

 the table-land, even then an 

 important plant, but which is 

 not known to have been in Eu- 

 ropean gardens before the middle 

 of the century just closed. In 

 1586 an American aloe flowered at Florence, and was figured by 

 Camerarius two years later. This picture is less questionable than 

 that of Clusius, as representing what we now call the century plant, 

 but it might possibly stand for what, a century later, was grown in 

 Dutch gardens as the broader-leaved aloe from Vera Cruz — now 

 known as Agave Vera Cruz or the synonym A. lurida. The reported 

 escape of the latter species in central Italy lends some support to this 

 surmise; but the picture can not be said not to represent A. Americana, 

 the wide-spread naturalization of which through the Mediterranean 

 countries seems to indicate conclusively that, whichever may have been 

 introduced first, it was really the century plant that was first extensively 

 propagated in Europe. 



The agaves have been esteemed as garden curiosities ever since their 



VOL. LXX. — 15. 



Fjg. 18. Willing to be photographed. 



