302 NOTES ON AGAVE. 
but also that of the larger Arizona species, is thus eaten, after baking, under the name of Mezcal, 
and is said to be a very savory dish. The name Maguey is more commonly used for the plant 
itself. 
LEAVES. 
The leaves of the Agaves are sessile with a broad sheathing base, from linear to lanceolate or 
even ovate, the broader ones contracted above the base, and widened again upwards. They are 
thick and fleshy, sometimes soft, but usually of a firmer texture, rarely quite tough and hard; in 
some species (only in the first group) they decay at the end of the season, but in most Agaves they 
are persistent for years. 
The margin of the leaf usually bears hard and dark-colored straight or hooked or variously 
flexed spiny teeth; sometimes it is denticulate with minute, pale teeth; rarely it dissolves, Yucca- 
like, into threads; in our A. parviflora it combines the teeth on the lower half with the fibres on 
the upper half of the leaf; very seldom the edge of the leaves is entire; in some species the whole 
margin of the leaf bearing the spines becomes dry, hard, and horny, and is eventually, together with 
the spines, detached from the leaf (4. heteracantha). It is not well known whether the spines, so 
much relied on to characterize the different forms, are sufficiently constant ; it seems, at least, that 
an extensively cultivated form of A. rigida, of Yucatan, has lost its spines, and produces them only 
occasionally and very sparsely ; in the allied genus Fourcroya, leaves with and without marginal 
spiny teeth are of common occurrence. 
The point of the leaf forms a soft herbaceous bristle, or usually a hard and pungent [295 (7)] 
spine, of different shapes, round, or compressed sideways, or flattened on the upper surface, 
or concave, or channelled ; and these characters seem to be constant and of specific value. 
The tissue of the leaf of most Agaves contains innumerable extremely tough fibres, which, in 
some of the species with sufficiently long leaves, afford, when freed from the surrounding parenchyma, 
valuable textile material, usually called Pita, in general use in their native countries, and even 
export A, Americana furnishes a coarser Pita; A. rigida, and its cultivated varieties are the 
source of the finer Sisal hemp; other species, e. g. A. heteracantha, are locally used for the same 
purposes. 
INFLORESCENCE. 
The flowering stem or scape shoots up from the centre of a rosette of leaves, continuing the 
main axis ; it bears numerous bractlike leaves (Hochblaetter), generally triangular from a broad base, 
often attenuated into a slender tip, smaller as they reach up into the inflorescence. All the vigor of 
the plant, all the nourishment accumulated in the massive leaves and in the succulent trunk, are 
used and exhausted in the production of the inflorescence. It is well-known that A. Americana is 
extensively cultivated in Mexico, principally for the immense quantity of saccharine juice prepared 
in its leaves for this purpose. When the flowering scape shows the first signs of development, the 
terminal bud and the innermost leaves are removed, when in the basin thus formed the liquid col- 
lects and is dipped out ; on an average about a gallon a day, for two or three months in succession ; 
from a single plant 150 to 300 gallons in all. From this juice the fermented (pulgue) and distilled 
(mezeal) liquors are prepared which are so generally used all over Mexico. The juice which is 
extracted before the plant prepares to bloom is acrid and not copious. 
The flowering stems are in the different species from 3 to 20, and, it is said, even 30 feet high, 
and from a few lines to 3-5 inches in diameter, together with those of the allied Fourcroyas, the 
tallest flowering stems known. 
The flowers are articulated on (usually extremely) short, persistent pedicels, bearing [296 (8)] 
one or two small bracts. The inflorescence itself shows three different forms, and, accord- 
