USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



of the Amaryllis family. Its general aspects are 

 made familiar through the well-known Century 

 Plant of cultivation. There are a dozen species or 

 more indigenous within the limits of the United 

 States, ranging mostly along the Mexican border 

 from Texas to California. For years ten to 

 twenty, it may be the plant devotes itself exclu- 

 sively to developing a rosette of slender, pulpy, 

 dagger-pointed leaves, stiff and fibrous. Then some 

 spring day, within the center of this savage leaf- 

 cradle, a conical bud is born and develops quickly, 

 a foot a day it may be, into a huge, asparagus-like 

 stalk, twelve or fifteen feet tall, that breaks out at 

 the summit into clusters of yellow blossoms. This 

 long delayed consummation costs the plant its life, 

 and with the maturing of its seeds it turns brown 

 and withers away. It is from a Mexican species of 

 Agave that the Mexicans manufacture their desolat- 

 ing drinks pulque and mescal. The United States 

 species, however, have been little turned to such 

 account, but as a nutritive food source they have 

 from very ancient times been important to the 

 Indians. This food shares with the fiery Mexican 

 drink the name mescal. Even at the present day, 

 when the ease of extracting a meal from a tin can 

 has been the cause of relegating many an honest 



134 



