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Agave murpheyi
Also called Hohokam Agave, Murphey Agave
Murphey's century plant is a rosette-forming agave known from only a few dozen ancient Hohokam sites in southern Arizona and northern Sonora, and it is mostly grown today as a historic or collector plant. It is a dry-climate succulent that needs full sun, sharp drainage and very little water.
Agave murpheyi is a species of agave. It is a succulent plant that is found growing only at a few dozen archaeological sites of the ancient Hohokam Indians in southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico. In 1935, there were reported half a dozen sites and in 1970 only two were known. It appears to be a cultivar grown by the Hohokam for food and fiber. Its common names include Hohokam agave, Murphey agave, and Murphey's century plant.
Agaves collected from the wild were an important source of food for Native Americans for thousands of years. However, in the 1980s archaeologists discovered that large areas of agave especially Agave murpheyi had been cultivated by the Hohokam people in the Tucson Basin, near the city of Marana. Seventy–eight square kilometers (almost 20,000 acres) of former agave fields have been discovered mostly between Phoenix and Tucson indicating that the agave was a major source of food for the Hohokam who numbered in the tens of thousands. Undoubtedly many other fields have been destroyed or are undetected by archaeologists.
Agave was cultivated by the Hohokam in the desert of the Tucson basin in rocky areas above the floodplain of the Santa Cruz river where more water-dependent crops were grown. The Hohokam planted agave in rockpiles about 5 ft (1.5 m) across and 2 ft (0.61 m) high. The pile of rocks around the base of the agave plant act as a mulch to help preserve moisture and prevent rodent predation.
Agave murpheyi was cultivated by the Hohokam and possibly other Native Americans for both food and fiber. For food the basal rosette was harvested just before the Hohokam agave sent up a flower stalk. At this time the concentration of sugars in the rosette is at its highest. The rosettes, weighing about 9 pounds (4.1 kg), were cooked for two or three days in a pit filled with hot stones and covered with hot coals and dirt. The baked rosette, compared in taste to a sweet potato (although containing inedible fiber), is nutritious with 347 calories and 3.5 grams of protein per 100 grams.
American century plant · Century plant · Fox Tail Agave · Cow's Horn Agave · Agave colorata · Thread Agave · Henequen · Agave guadalajarana · Black Spined Agave · Agave maculata · Palmer's century plant · Agave parrasana
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Agave murpheyi 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
