A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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sotol
Sotol is a desert plant of the Chihuahuan and neighboring country growing as a dense rosette of long narrow leaves edged with hooked teeth, from which it throws a flowering stalk up to fifteen feet with a dense plume of small cream flowers. It is not an agave and not a yucca, though it grows alongside both and is regularly mistaken for either. Male and female flowers are on separate plants.
Etymology
The name came into Spanish from Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and into English from Spanish. The Latin genus name means saw-toothed leaf: The teeth curve toward the base of the leaf. The distilled spirit made from the plant carries the same name.
Notes
The heart of the plant is roasted in pits, fermented, and distilled, in the same way mezcal is made from agave, and sotol has a protected designation in three Mexican states. The dried flower stalk is light, straight, and strong, and it was used for fire drills, arrow shafts, and lattice in construction across the region. Unlike an agave, the plant does not die after flowering.