This is an indispensable guide to agaves. The uses of agaves are as many as the arts of man have found it convenient to devise. At least two races of man have invaded Agaveland during the last ten to fifteen thousand years, where, with the help of agaves, they contrived several successive civilizations. The region of greatest use development is Mesoamerica. Here the great genetic diversity in a genus rich in use potential came into the hands of several peoples who developed the main agricultural center of the Americas. Perhaps, as the Aztec legends suggest, it was the animals that first showed man the edibility of agave. Evolution in use ranges all the way from the coincidental and spurious, through tool and food-drink subsistence with mystical overlay, to the practical specialties of modem industry and art. The historic period of agave will be outlined here as briefly as that complicated development will allow.

New in paperback Spring 2004, this is an indispensable guide to agaves. The uses of agaves are as many as the arts of man have found it convenient to devise. At least two races of man have invaded Agaveland during the last ten to fifteen thousand years, where, with the help of agaves, they contrived several successive civilizations. The region of greatest use development is Mesoamerica. Here the great genetic diversity in a genus rich in use potential came into the hands of several peoples who developed the main agricultural center of the Americas. Perhaps, as the Aztec legends suggest, it was the animals that first showed man the edibility of agave. Evolution in use ranges all the way from the coincidental and spurious, through tool and food-drink subsistence with mystical overlay, to the practical specialties of modem industry and art. The historic period of agave will be outlined here as briefly as that complicated development will allow.

Excerpt from A Study of the Agaves of the United States Leichtlinia protuberans Ross, A. Protuberans Engelm., has been placed between the genera Polianthes and Agave, on account of its coni cal ovary protruding into the perianth. On July 29th, I collected a monstrous inflorescence of A. Applanata Parryi, in the mountains above Pleasant Valley, a few miles from Fort Bayard. The top of the scape had been broken by some accident, and the plant had made an efiert to produce flowers on a low branch of the inflorescence. These flowers were in a thick mass close to the main axis. All were imperfect or distorted. Some were grown together. The segments in nearly all cases were greatly broadened and frequently thickened. The filaments also were broad and in some cases showed a distinct reversion to the petaloid character. In some flowers it was diflicult to tell whether a certain organ represented a segment or a fila ment, but in the larger and better developed flowers, there was usually an equal number of each, and this number varied from six to five, four, three, and even two. In one large flower the style was irregularly four lobed, and the stigma, three-lobed, one lobe being much larger than the other two. The ovary was usually represented by a short thick mass of tissue with little or no difierentiation. Mr. Webber writes me of finding a monstrous Agave flower upon a plant of what I suppose was A. Rigida sisalana. This flower had stamens and pistils perfectly developed, but was without any ovary difierentiation, and was found growing from a cluster of leaves of the bulb. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.