Agave murpheyi is a species of agave. It is a succulent plant that is found growing only at a few dozen archaeological sites of the ancient Hohokam Indians in southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico. In 1935 there were reported half a dozen sites and in 1970 only two were known. It appears to be a cultivar grown by the Hohokam for food and fiber. Its common names include Hohokam agave, Murphey agave, and Murphey's century plant. Description This agave produces a rosette of leaves up to 80 centimeters long by 20 centimeters wide in shades of green to blue-green with pale banding. They develop a red coloration during flowering. The leaves may curl slightly toward the center. They are lined with small, straight teeth and tipped with a spine up to 2 centimeters long. The plant produces an inflorescence 3 to 4 meters tall with many flowers along the branches. The flowers are greenish with purple or brown tips and are up to 7.5 centimeters long. The fruit is a woody capsule 5 to 7 centimeters long containing seeds but these are rarely produced with the flowers aborting before the fruits form. Despite being untended for more than 500 years Hohokam agave continue to grow at a few old archaeological sites. This agave produces only by bulbils and hybridizes with Agave chrysantha in Arizona (almost all species labeled as Murphey agave are in fact hybrids with the Murphey agave being a hybrid of Agave palmeri x vivipara). Uses Agave murpheyi was cultivated by the Hohokam and possibly other Native Americans for both food and fiber. For food the basal rosette was harvested just before the Hohokam agave sent up a flower stalk. At this time the concentration of sugars in the rosette is at its highest. The rosettes, weighing about , were cooked for two or three days in a pit filled with hot stones and covered with hot coals and dirt. The baked rosette, compared in taste to a sweet potato (although containing inedible fiber), is nutritious with 347 calories and 3.5 grams of protein per 100 grams. Cultivation Agaves collected from the wild were an important source of food for Native Americans for thousands of years. However, in the 1980s archaeologists discovered that large areas of agave especially Agave murpheyi had been cultivated by the Hohokam people in the Tucson Basin, near the city of Marana. Seventy-eight