AGAVE 



AGAVE 



231 



American deserts, the most familiar of which is A. 

 americana, the CENTURY PLANT, or AMERICAN ALOE. 



Stem short or wanting : Ivs. mostly in a close rosette, 

 usually stiff and more or less fleshy, persisting from year 

 to year, the margins mostly armed with teeth and the 

 apex tipped with a usually pungent spine: fls. in spikes 

 (Littsea) or panicles (Euagave); perianth 6-parted, 

 more or less funnel-shaped; stamens 6, mostly long- 

 exserted; style 1; stigma capitately 3-lobed; ovary in- 

 ferior, 3-celled; seeds numerous, flat, thin, black. Some 

 species flower but once and die, others occasionally, 

 while others flower from year to year. The number of 

 species is fully 300, and more than 325 have been de- 

 scribed, largely from the Mexican tableland, although 

 each island of the W. Indies possesses its peculiar 

 species. One of the largest collections is at Kew, where 

 there are 85 named species. The largest collections in 

 the U. S. are at the Botanical Garden of Washington 

 and the Missouri Botanical Garden, where there are 

 about 75 species each. Amateurs often cult, a greater 

 number of species than are described in this account. 



The most complete monographs of the genus as a 

 whole are by General von Jacobi, in the Hamburg 

 Garten Zeitung, 1864-1865, of which a limited number 

 of reprints with supplements were issued in book form, 

 and by J. G. Baker in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1877. 

 with excellent small illustrations, which was amplified 

 in his Handbook of the Amaryllidese, 1888. Several of 

 the natural groups composing the subgenus Euagave 

 have been monographed and illustrated in the Reports 

 of the Missouri Botanical Garden, one of which also 

 contains a monograph of the species known to occur 

 in Lower California. The half-hundred West Indian 

 species are figured and monographically treated in the 

 eleventh volume of Memoirs of the National Academy 

 of Sciences. Engelmann has published a monograph of 

 the species of the United States, first classified on flower 

 characters, in the Transactions of the Academy of 

 Science of St. Louis, Vol. III. 



Agaves are essentially fanciers' or amateurs' plants. 

 This noble group of plants has never received the atten- 

 tion it deserves, and yet no genus of plants in America 

 furnishes so many suitable decorative plants. Sir 

 Joseph Hooker places it next to the palm and aloe, but 

 the former is a great family 

 of 1,100 species. While in 

 the United States one thinks 

 of the agaves only as 

 decorative plants, yet in 

 Mexico, their native home, 

 they are the most useful of 

 plants. Many species fur- 

 nish fiber, others soap, while 

 still others produce the two 

 great Mexican drinks, 

 pulque and mescal. Pulque, 

 which is a fermented drink, 

 is derived from 



F?V **4j //' /^several species, 



\ \W^-'^ / ] /j$L especially A . atrovi- 

 rcns. Mescal, which 

 is a distilled drink, 

 is usually not ob- 

 tained from the 

 same species as 

 pulque, although there is 

 a general belief to the con- 

 trary. The species from 

 which is made most of the 

 mescal used in Mexico is unknown. The species vary 

 so much in size and form that they can be used in 

 a great many ways. Some of the smaller species are 

 suitable for the house, and even some of the larger 

 species are so used. The larger species are well adapted 

 for vases in large gardens and grounds, along walks, 

 terraces, and the like. These plants, coming, as they do, 



from arid or even desert regions, where they have a 

 hard struggle to exist, can be grown with little or no 

 care, but they respond very quickly to good treatment. 

 The species are propagated in various ways; some pro- 

 duce suckers at the base, or even underground shoots: 

 others give off buds from the stem, which fall off and 

 take root, or may be detached and planted; while not 

 a few produce bulblets in the flower-clusters, and some- 

 times in great abundance. Nearly all may be produced 

 from seed, but as most of the species flower only after 

 a long interval, and many have not yet been known to 

 flower in cultivation, this latter means of propagation 

 cannot be relied upon. In cultivation, fruit is set very 

 sparingly or not at all without artificial pollination, 

 although this can be accomplished with very little 

 trouble. (J. N. Rose.) 



The agaves are not at all difficult to grow. The soil 

 should be principally loam and sand, and if any vege- 

 table soil be given it should be in small quantities. 

 Good drainage and firm potting are necessary. To grow 

 small plants of the large-leaved kinds into good-sized 

 specimens quickly, they should be plunged out in a 

 sunny spot in spring, taking care that the pots are large 

 enough so that they will not require repotting in the 

 fall. Nearly all of the large-growing kinds are easily 

 increased from suckers, which, when the plants are 

 grown in a pot-bound condition, are produced very 

 readily. They should be taken off from the parent plant 

 only when furnished with sufficient roots to give them 

 a start. Some kinds are raised only from seeds, which, 

 when freshly gathered, germinate in a few weeks. 

 (G. W. Oliver.) 



The classification of the agaves is very perplexing. 

 This is partially owing to the number of species, to 

 the scarcity of preserved study material, and to the 

 infrequency of flowering in many species. In fact, 

 many species have never been known to flower. The 

 most usable characters for classification are to be found 

 in the leaves, of which the end-spine and marginal 

 prickles are very characteristic, and, although such an 

 arrangement is more or less artificial, it is the most satis- 

 factory in naming a collection. From a botanical point 

 of view, however, the inflorescence shows the true rela- 

 tionship of the species. In this way the genus is usually 

 divided into three groups or subgenera. These are: First, 

 Euagave, having a paniculate inflorescence, with can- 

 delabra-like branches. Second, LitUea, having a dense 

 spike of usually paired flowers. (The section LMxa has 

 been considered by some a good genus, but it seems to 

 connect with the first section through certain species.) 

 The third section, Manfreda, is very different from the 

 above, and is now considered as a distinct generic type, 

 and so treated here. Manfredas are all herbaceous, 

 appearing each year from a bulbous base: the leaves 

 are soft and weak, dying down annually, while the in- 

 florescence is a slender open spike, with solitary flowers 

 from the axils of bracts. 



INDEX. 



137. Agathis 

 orientalis. (X)e) 



