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Agave mapisaga var. lisa - A very large agave to 6 1/2 to 8 feet tall by over 9 feet wide with thick gray green 6- to 9-foot-long leaves that arch upwards held in an open sprawling rosette with few offsets. The rough to the touch leaves only have a few teeth along the margins and a large dark brown terminal spine. Flowering on a massive spike to 26 feet tall holding lateral peduncles of yellow flowers. Because it offsets little and the flowers have not produced viable seed or bulbils, this plant is rarely seen in gardens.
Plant in a large open space in full sun and give occasional to very little irrigation. Has proven hardy to around 20 °F. As Howard Scott Gentry says in his Agaves of Continental North America "This gigantic succulent is unexceeded in size by any other agave".
The species Agave mapisaga is noted as being related to Agave salmiana but with longer and narrower leaves. It is cultivated over a wide range with Agave salmiana in the Central Mexican highlands without any known naturally occurring location. This variety, Agave mapisaga var. lisa, is even more of a mystery. It was originally received by William Hertrich, long time superintendent of the Huntington Botanic Garden, in 1933 as a seedling from Fernando Schmoll of Queretaro, Mexico. The plant was simply listed as "maguey lisa" without other specific information. Howard Scott Gentry was never able to locate the plant in habitat in Mexico and concluded that it "appears to represent a clonal variety from some obscure locality", so many consider it as a natural clone of Agave mapisaga var. mapisaga. It is speculated that this large form was domesticated for its massive "cabeza" (head) which can be roasted and the pulp eaten or fermented for the alcoholic beverage called Pulque. Interestingly Fernando Schmoll, the Huntington's source of this plant, was a painter who with his wife, biologist Carolina Wagner, founded their nursery Quinta Fernando Schmoll (or just La Quinta) in 1920 to study and disseminate knowledge of cacti and succulents and the nursery remains in operation today.
Our plants of Agave mapisaga var. lisa (HBG 3633) were propagated from a plant received from the Huntington Botanic Gardens International Succulent Introductions as ISI 2011-15 that originally came from rooted offsets from tissue-culture propagation of the original plant growing in the Huntington Botanic Gardens.
The information displayed on this page about Agave mapisaga var. lisa is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.
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