Description :

• Robust, monocarpic, usually rosulate perennials arising from short rhizome or short erect caudex
• Stem commonly with monocotyledonous type secondary growth
• Leaves usually crowded in basal rosette, leathery to succulent, amplexicaul, persisting for many years; each vascular bundle with well-developed fibrous cap at phloem pole
• Inflorescence apical, tall, fast-growing, terminating in a panicle, often massive
• Flowers bisexual, regular or somewhat irregular, tubular, pedicellate, trimerous throughout
• Perianth petaloid, 3 + 3, often fleshy, united below to form a tube
• Stamens 3 + 3; anthers mostly dorsifixed, introrse, versatile, opening by longitudinal slits, linear to oblong
• Ovary inferior, trilocular, with septal nectaries; placentation axile; ovules in 2 vertical rows in each locule; style terminal; stigma 3-lobed
• Fruit a loculicidal capsule
• Seeds many, flattened, centrally embedded in copious, very hard endosperm
• x = 30

Nomenclature:

• *Agave L.
  • Linnaeus: 323 (1753)
  • Trelease: 231 (1914)
  • Berger: 21 (1915)
  • Gentry: 41 (1972)
  • Gentry: 10 (1978)
  • Gentry: 61 (1982)
  • Pedley & Forster: 72, 74 (1986)
  • Couper & Cullen: 278 (1988)
  • Smith & Mössmer: 31 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 275
• Southern Africa : Species 2, introduced: *Agave americana L. and *Agave sisalana Perrine, naturalised around sites of habitation and as plantations for tequila and fibre production, mainly in the more arid, karroid regions