AGAVE, in Botany, comprehends those plants which gardeners call American aloes. There are many species of this genus, one only of which requires to be mentioned here, viz, the Agave Americana, or American Aloe. This is a plant, which, when full grown, has a short cylindrical woody stem, which is ter minated by hard, fleshy, spiny, sharp-pointed, bluish-green leaves, about six feet long, and altogether resembling those of the arbores cent aloes. It is commonly supposed that this plant only reaches maturity at the end of one hundred years ; but this, like many other popular opinions, is an error, the period at which the agave arrives at maturity varying, according to circumstances, from ten to fifty or even to seventy years. In hot or otherwise favourable climates, it grows rapidly, and soon arrives at the term of its existence ; but in colder regions, or under the care of the gar dener, where it is frequently impracticable to attend to all the circumstances that accelerate its development, it requires the longest period that has been assigned to it. Having acquired its full growth, it finally produces its gigantic flower-stem, after which it perishes. This stem is sometimes as much as forty feet high, and is surrounded with a multitude of branches arranged in a pyramidal form, with perfect symmetry, and having on their points clusters of greenish yellow flowers, which continue to be produced for two or three months in suc cession. The native country of the American
aloe is the whole of America within the tropics, from the plains nearly on a level with the sea, to stations upon the mountains at an elevation of between 0,000 and 10,000 feet. The sap may be made to flow by incisions in the stem, and furnishes a fermented liquor, called by the Mexicans Pulque ; from this an agreeable ardent spirit, called Vino Mercal, is distilled.
The fibres of the" leaVes form a coarse kind of thread ; the flowering stems dried make an almost imperishable thatch; an extract of the leaves is made into balls, which will produce a lather with water ; the fresh leaves themselves cut into slices are occasionally given to cattle; and finally the centre of the flowering stem split longitudinally is by no means a bad sub stitute for a European razor strop, owing to minute particles of silica forming one of its constituents.