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Agave
Also called Century Plants
Agaves are succulent, drought-tolerant plants from the arid Americas that form large rosettes of stiff, fleshy, spiny leaves. Most species grow slowly, flower only once, and die after flowering, often producing offsets that carry on the plant.
Agave (; also UK: ; Anglo-Hispanic, also US: ) is a genus of monocots native to the arid regions of the Americas. The genus is primarily known for its succulent and xerophytic species that typically form large rosettes of strong, fleshy leaves.
Many plants in this genus may be considered perennial, because they require several to many years to mature and flower. However, most Agave species are more accurately described as monocarpic rosettes or multiannuals, since each individual rosette flowers only once and then dies; a small number of Agave species are polycarpic.
Some species contain components in their juice which can cause dermatitis for some people.
Agave species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) species, including Batrachedra striolata, which has been recorded on A. shawii.
The ethnobotany of the agave was described by William H. Prescott in 1843:
American century plant · Century plant · Fox Tail Agave · Cow's Horn Agave · Agave colorata · Thread Agave · Henequen · Agave guadalajarana · Black Spined Agave · Agave maculata · Murphey's century plant · Palmer's century plant
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Agave by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
