09 
THE MEXICAN FIBER AGAVES KNOWN AS ZAPUPE*. 
By WILLIAM TRELEASE. 
During the last four years frequent mention has been 
made of an important addition to the agriculture of Mex- 
ico through the extensive cultivation of a new type of 
fiber plant, ‘‘zapupe,’’ in the coast or piedmont region 
between Vera Cruz and Victoria. Much of the publicity 
given the new venture has resulted from the intelligent 
interest taken in it by Mr. A. J. Lespinasse, late Consul 
for the United States at Tuxpam in the State of Vera 
Cruz, who in December last predicted a yield of three or 
four million pounds of fiber for this year from existing 
plantations. 
It has been recognized that the name zapupe applies 
to several more or less different forms of Agave bearing 
a resemblance to one another and to the ‘‘sisal’’ or ‘‘hen- 
equen’’ plants of Yucatan and the ‘‘mezcal’’ plants culti- | 
vated in the vicinity of Tequila, in western Mexico; and. 
enough habit photographs have been reproduced in pub- 
lications to indicate the accuracy of this general conclu- 
sion. The only botanists who are known to have examined 
the new fiber plantations, however, are Dr. R. Endlich, 
who in 1905 visited the plantations about Tuxpam, and 
the following year collected the ‘‘ixtle’’ of the Mirador 
hacienda and its wild representative; Dr. C. A. Purpus, 
who in 1906 visited the Mirador hacienda; and Mr. L. H. 
Dewey, of our national Department of Agriculture, who 
studied the zapupes of the plantations about she tig and 
Victoria early in 1907. 
Although the fiber of some of these plants has been used 
and the plants have been cultivated in a way by the In- 
dians, for a very long time, extensive plantations seem to 
date from about 1901. There is no evidence that a ten- 
* Presented before The Academy of Science of St. Louis, May 3, 1909. 
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