Accession Count: 9
Common Name:
Murphey's agave
Family Name:
Asparagaceae
Botanical Name:
Agave murpheyi
Sub Species:
Variety:
Forma:
Cultivar:
'Variegata'
Characteristics:
Murphey's agave is known for it's characteristically striped or banded appearance. It has lanceolate shaped leaves that can be up to three inches wide and twenty to twenty-five inches long. They vary in color from light gray to blue-green, yellow-green. They are a winter evergreen and listed as "highly safeguarded" under the Arizona Native Plant Law. They mainly function as an accent plant.
Compound:
Aga mur Var
Geographic Origin:
Central Arizona
Ecozone Origin:
Nearctic
Biome Origin:
SW
Natural History:
All currently existing populations of Murphey’s agave are found between central Arizona to Sonora (3) at ancient Native American archeological sites, and the exact origin is unknown (6).
Cultivation Notes:
After the A. murpheyi flowers, it sets no viable seed but produced bulbils on the stalk branches. If used as an ornamental plant it is tough and handsome. This species is a fairly low maintenance plant to take care of and grows best in full sun or part shade.
Ethnobotany:
Murphey’s agave, like other agave, is used for food and beverages (4, 6). The leaves are cut off to leave the “heads” (cabeza) or “hearts” (corazón), which are roasted in large pits and eaten (4, 6). The fresh juice is called aguamiel, or honey-water (6). The juice from the head can be steamed and fermented into an alcoholic beverage called pulque, or further distilled into a type of liquor called mescal (6), or made into syrup (4). An agave is good for harvest when it is just about to flower; this indicates that it has a large amount of sugar stored inside (4).
Wendy Hodgson describes the process for harvesting and baking the agave hearts for many native tribes. The process differs a little between them, but they follow a similar pattern: when the agave were about to send up flower stalks, natives would seek out and often set up camp in areas with many agave. Roasting pits were dug out with digging sticks and a fire was started, usually by a person who was born in the summer or considered to be lucky. When the fire died down to embers, the agave hearts were placed on the embers in between layers of vegetation, and then covered with earth. The agave hearts were roasted for about 48 hours during which time taboos such as sexual relations were avoided (otherwise they would not bake properly). Women would mark their agaves in various ways or position them so that they could identify them when they were done roasting. The baked agave was often pounded into sheets or cakes and dried to be stored for later (4).
Agave plants have also been used for fiber for making clothing, sandals, and other textiles, as well as lances, fire hearths, musical instruments, soap, and medicine (4, 5).
Murphey’s agave has been used by the San Carlos Apache (Pueblo), White Mountain Apache (Pueblo), Northeastern Yavapai, Salt River Pima, and Hohokam and Tohono O’odham peoples (4). A. murpheyi is unique in the fact that it was cultivated extensively by the Hohokam people (2, 4, 5), thought to be the ancestors of some modern O’odham peoples (4). It was cultivated over hundreds of thousands of acres over what is today Arizona and Sonora for food and fiber (2, 4, 5). It has certain attributes which lend itself well to cultivation for these purposes: it grows to be quite large, matures quickly, and readily produces offsets by rhizome or in the leaf axils, as well as producing numerous small plantlets on the flower stalk which can fall down and root (3, 4). These plantlets, or bulbils, emerge from floral meristems and are clones, rather than viviparous seedlings (1). It is considered to be a very sweet-tasting agave, with leaves that contain fine, rot-resistant fibers, and are easy to cut and bear small teeth (4). Also, the flowering time for populations of Murphey’s agave is almost synchronous, which makes harvesting more convenient (4). The Hohokam assembled basalt check-dams (lines of rocks), rock piles, and terraces, in order to slow and catch water where the agave grew, and those remaining archaeological sites are where many clonal populations of A. murpheyi are found today (2, 4, 6). Since this species rarely produces seeds in the wild (3), as noted by Wendy Hodgson, “clones of A. murpheyi are living archaeological assemblages preserved in their cultural landscape for more than five centuries after their presumed cultivation” (4).
Height:
0 - 5 feet
Width:
0 - 5 feet
Growth Rate:
Moderate Growing
Grow Season:
Fall
Flower Season:
Fall
Color:
Yellow
Function:
Accent
Spread:
Spreading
Allergen:
Non-allergenic
Invasive:
Benign
Toxicity:
Benign
Hardy:
Hardy
Water Use:
Low water Use
Citations:
1. Insurance against reproductive failure in a semelparous plant: bulbil formation in Agave <g data-gr-id="25">macroacantha</g> flowering stalks. in: Oecologia.
2. Evidence for Large-scale Agave Cultivation in the Marana Community. in: University of Arizona Press.
3. Agave murpheyi <g data-gr-id="27">in:</g> Arizona Game and Fish
4. Hodgson, W.C. (2001). Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Print.
5. Irish, M. (2003). Arizona gardener’s guide. Tennessee: Cool Springs Press. Print.
6. Phillips, S.J. and Comus, P.W. (2000). A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert. Tucson: Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Press. Print.
7. Irish, Gary, and Mary F Irish. Agaves, Yuccas, and Related Plants: A Gardener's Guide. 1st ed., Timber Press Incorporated, 2000.
