Scientific: Agave deserti
Common: desert agave, mescal, century plant or maguey
Family: Asparagaceae (subfamily Agavoideae)
Origin: Rocky and gravely soils in the desert southwest United States. Its range extends from the Mojave Desert east through the lower Sonoran Desert and up in elevation into the beautiful Sierra Ancha Mountains of central Arizona. Agave deserti is reported to be the most desert adapted of the agaves.
Pronounciation: A-GA-ve de-SER-ti
Hardiness zones:
Sunset 12-24
USDA 9 - 11
Landscape Use: Medium-sized agave for large out of the away desert landscape spaces.
Form & Character: Sharp, tough and unfriendly.
Growth Habit: Desert agave is an evergreen, succulent, yet fibrous perennial monocot, monocarpic. Desert agaves are small to medium sized, glaucous gray to greenish, and generally grow basal offshoots.
Foliage/Texture: Leaves are rigid, coarsely fibered, with a thick cuticle, narrowly lanceolate and with weak, easily detached teeth (serrations), or broader and with firmer teeth (serrations), to 3 feet in length; coarse texture.
Flowers & Fruits: Flower stalks are a sturdy and thick up to 10-feet tall. Stalks are a narrow panicle with short lateral branches, dry scarious peduncular bracts, and small umbellate flower clusters; flowers small with very short open tube, the sepals about equal and 3 to 5 times as long as the tube. Spring flowering, thus young developing stalks can become purplish at higher elevations due to night-time cold. Fruits are a "capsule, small to medium size, and are freely seeding" (Gentry, 1982).
Seasonal Color: None, except when desert agave bloom once at 10 to 20 years of age.
Temperature: Indigenuous to the lower Sonoran Desert; thus, it is completely at home in lower desert landscape settings.
Light: Full sun
Soil: Any soil type, but thrives best if soils are very gravely sand to loamy coarse sand.
Watering: Limited to no supplemental irrigation is required for desert agave.
Pruning: None
Propagation: Division of underground rhizomes.
Disease and Pests: None
Additional comments: Desert agave has a rich ethnobotanical legacy. The Coahuilan Indians of Southern California are thought to have once made use of desert agave. They referred to desert agave as "a-mul", sections of the flowering stalk as "u-a-sil", the leaves as "ya-mil", and the yellow blossoms as "amul-sal-em". These parts of desert agave were all cooked in various ways and eaten, or made into drink, soap, clothing, rope, other fibers, needles and thread, paper, glue, weapons, medicines, red coloring matter or ornamental and hedge plants. Variety deserti is native to Southern California. Variety simplex is native to Arizona.
References
Gentry, Howard Scott 1982, "Agaves of Continental North America" pg.354. The University of Arizona Press, 1982.
