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The Collaborative International Dictionary
century plant

Maguey \Mag"uey\, n. [Sp. maguey, Mexican maguei and metl.] (Bot.) Any of several species of Agave, such as the century plant ( Agave Americana), a plant requiring many years to come to maturity and blossoming only once before dying; and the Agave atrovirens, a Mexican plant used especially for making pulque, the source of the colorless Mexican liquor mescal; and the cantala ( Agave cantala), a Philippine plant yielding a hard fibre used in making coarse twine. See Agave.

2. A hard fibre used in making coarse twine, derived from the Philippine Agave cantala ( Agave cantala); also called cantala.

Wiktionary
century plant

n. An agave (''Agave americana'') originally from Mexico but cultivated worldwide.

WordNet
century plant

n. tropical American plants with basal rosettes of fibrous sword-shaped leaves and flowers in tall spikes; some cultivated for ornament or for fiber [syn: agave, American aloe]

Usage examples of "century plant".

It was a century plant-a desert agave that bloomed once every hundred years.

Even 20th-century plant breeders, armed with all the power of modern science, have had little success in exploiting North American wild plants.

Even 20th-century plant breeders, armed with all the power of modern science, have had little success in exploiting North American wild?

They made their way cautiously out of the century plant, which was now larger than it had been, though they hadn't seen it grow.

It is commonly known as mescal, but is also called the century plant from a mistaken notion that it blossoms only once in a hundred years.