Agave

"Agaves are spiny desert plants native to Mexico that grow slowly, storing sap in their core for years until blooming a single, towering stalk of flowers before death. Typically, agaves are harvested right before they flower, the point when the plants have stored the most sap. It's the sugar-rich cores – called piñas for their resemblance to pineapples — that are harvested, cooked and pressed to release a rich syrup that is processed into nectar or fermented into alcohol . . . The Aztecs fermented agave sap into a milky alcoholic beverage called pulque . . . It's unclear whether distillation was practiced by ancient Mesoamericans or if it was introduced by Spanish colonists, but distilled agave spirits are now consumed worldwide . . . The booming market for agave products and the accompanying price roller coaster have serious environmental consequences. Mezcal makers have responded to the drink's meteoric rise by ramping up their collection of the wild agaves, alarming environmentalists who fear the slow-growing populations may not be able to recover . . . The practice of early harvesting has also become more common, and this presents another challenge by removing a critical food source from the desert: the agave's flowers."