4-OO THK FORAGE AND FIBER CROPS IN AMERICA 



the large, thick leaves by crushing with machinery, the most 

 improved types of which will crush 150,000 leaves daily. A 

 thousand leaves are estimated to produce 50 pounds of fiber. 

 Under favorable conditions a yield of 600 to 1,200 pounds of 

 fiber per acre may be obtained. The fiber is yellowish white, 

 two and a half to four feet in length, harsh and lacking in flexi- 

 bility and easily decomposed by salt water. Next to cotton, it is 

 the most extensively used fiber in the United States, being used 

 principally for binder twine and for mixing with manila fiber 

 in the manufacture of cordage of various sizes. Door mats and 

 other coarse floor matting are made largely of sisal. Yucatan 

 sisal is shipped in bales weighing from 350 to 400 pounds. 



The sisal is a tropical plant growing on barren, rocky land, 

 useless for other agricultural purposes. It develops best in a 

 limestone soil and a comparatively dry climate. Its cultivation 

 is confined almost exclusively to Yucatan, the West Indian 

 Islands, and Hawaii, the former being by far the chief source of 

 the commercial fiber. 



"The sisal plant is propagated by suckers springing from the roots of old 

 plants, or from bulbils. Bulbils, called 'mast plants,' are produced in great 

 numbers on the flower stalks in place of seed pods, like onion sets. The plants 

 are set out during the rainy season, in rows four to eight feet apart, in holes 

 dug in partly disintegrated coral or lime rock with crowbars, pickaxes, and 

 sometimes with the aid of dynamite. The ground where sisal is grown is 

 usually too rocky to permit any stirring of the soil. About the only care 

 given is to cut the brush and weeds once or twice each year. The weeds and 

 brush, largely leguminous plants, by decaying on the ground add fertility 

 to the soil. The first crop of outer leaves of the plants is cut at the end 

 of three years when grown from suckers, or four years when grown from 

 mast plants. From ten to twenty leaves are produced each year for a period 

 of twelve to twenty-five years in Yucatan, ten to fifteen years in Cuba, and 

 six to twelve years in the Bahamas. An unusually cold winter at any period 

 tends to check growth and cause the plants to send up flower stalks, after 

 which they die." 1 



VII. MAGUEY 



504. THE MAGUEY PLANT {Agave cantula Roxb., A. vivipara L.) has the 

 same habits of growth, and is propagated by the same methods as the sisal 



1 U. S. Dept. Agr. Yearbook 1903, pp. 395, 396. 



