agave

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Any of numerous plants of the genus Agave, native to hot, dry regions of the Americas and having basal rosettes of tough, usually spiny-margined leaves. Agaves are grown for ornament, fiber, and food.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun [lowercase] A plant of this genus.
• noun A large North American genus of plants, of the natural order Amaryllidaceæ, chiefly Mexican.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (bot.) A genus of plants (order Amaryllidaceæ) of which the chief species is the maguey or century plant (Agave Americana), wrongly called Aloe. It is from ten to seventy years, according to climate, in attaining maturity, when it produces a gigantic flower stem, sometimes forty feet in height, and perishes. The fermented juice is the pulque of the Mexicans; distilled, it yields mescal. A strong thread and a tough paper are made from the leaves, and the wood has many uses.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A plant of the genus Agave which includes the maguey or century plant. Attaining maturity, it produces a gigantic flower stem.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun tropical American plants with basal rosettes of fibrous sword-shaped leaves and flowers in tall spikes; some cultivated for ornament or for fiber