Agave
Agave names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Agave a-ga've, a genus of plants related to the narcissus and daffodil
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a-ga've, a genus of plants related to the narcissus and daffodil. The best known species is the American aloe or century plant . This agave produces a spreading clump of long, fleshy leaves with spiny margins. After years of waiting, whence the name "century plant," a leafless flower stem suddenly shoots up from the center to a height of from ten to possibly thirty feet and bears a profusion of lily-like flowers. The plant is then exhausted and dies. There are about one hundred and fifty different kinds of agaves, all natives of the warmer parts of America. Some seventy-five kinds are under cultivation and observation in the botanical garden at Washington, and as many in the Missouri Botanical Garden at St. Louis. The Mexican agave yields a sweet juice from which pulque, the national beverage of Mexico, is manufactured. The American agave has been introduced into southern Europe and northern Africa with a view to its use as a hedge. It grows luxuriantly in all parts of Italy, where it is seen clinging to precipitous walls of tufa or striking its roots into the loose and dry volcanic soil along the roadsides. The spiny leaves form hedges which turn stock like a wall of bayonets. The leaves of the agave grown in Italy are used for the manufacture of hemp; and, cut into slices, are fed to cattle. The leaves of the various agaves are full of fibers or threads running lengthwise. When the green leaves are soaked in water for a length of time, the pulp rots and separates from the fibers, which may then be drawn out. An agave of Yucatan yields an immense amount of so-called sisal hemp. It is imported into the United States to be twisted into cables, ropes, and string. A large part of the cordage in use in this country is made of sisal. When a farmer puts a ball of binding twine in place on his self-binding harvester, the chances are that he is handling the fibers of agave leaves. Very likely they were shipped in bales from the Yucatan coast to be made into balls of twine in some American factory. See Pulque ; Sisal
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an extensive genus of plants belonging to the natural order amaryllidaceæ. The species have large, fleshy leaves, with teeth ending in spinous points. From the center of a circle of these leaves there rises, as the plant approaches maturity, tall scape of a flowers. The idea that the agave blossoms but once in a hundred years is a fable. But as a result of this popular pop misconception the plant is known under the name of Century Plant. What really happens is, that some species, taking many years (10 to 70, it is thought) to come to maturity, flower but once, and then die. The plant originally belonged to North America, and is chiefly found in Mexico. It is now cultivated in the south of Europe.
Agave a-ga've. See Bacchus
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a-ga've. See Bacchus
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The botany still holds — the plant does not need a century, and it dies after flowering once, as Collier's noted in 1921 when it called the hundred-year story "a fable." What has changed is the economics. Aiton's 1910 confidence that a farmer's binding twine was probably Yucatán agave fibre has been undone by synthetics: nylon and polypropylene displaced henequen and sisal cordage after the 1950s, and Yucatán's fibre boom collapsed, while Brazil and Tanzania took what remained of the world sisal trade. Meanwhile the drinks side grew enormously — tequila, made from blue agave and protected by a Mexican denomination of origin since 1974, is a global export, and boiled agave sap is sold worldwide as agave nectar. Botanists have also moved the genus out of Amaryllidaceae, where Collier's placed it, into the asparagus family, Asparagaceae.
Written for this edition, 2026.