Photos

It was interesting to found this plant here, on Cyprus soil beause this is agave (a some sort of it), a (sub)tropical plant from Central America region.

There are more than 300 sorts of agave in the world. Archeologists say it has been cultivated for at least 9,000 years. The Agave obtained it's name from the Greek language (this is a relation to Cyprus! :)) - the word 'agavos' meaning illustrious, an apt description for some magnificent and noble plants. The agave was known to the ancient Mexicans under the name of ' maguey '. On it's home territory it reaches twice the height of a man and the trunk is the width of a thigh. This plant is useful in a number of ways : moist leaves, covered in a linen cloth, can be used as a plaster to put round a limb or an arm broken in several places and in 15 days it will be united and healed as if it had never been broken. The juice, extracted from lightly cooked leaves, put on an ulcer or fresh wound causes it to heal rapidly. The sap of the flowers and roots mixed to a bitter tasting juice neutralises the effects of a rattle snake bite. From the agave a type of paper used in medicine is made.
With the fibres and the thread you can make sandals, mats, clothes and saddles. The end spines are so strong and sharp that they can be nailed into wood and, if sharp enough, can be used as needles to sew leather and cloth.
But of course the agave is most famous for its "liquid products" - pulque (which is fermented agave juice), mezcal (distilled pulque obtained from several agave sorts) and tequila which could only be produced from blue agave juice (aka Agave tequilana Weber or agave azul) and distilled by an authorized distiller.

I hope you like it (i mean the picture :))

Cropped, levels, increased green a little, unsharp mask.
***
I've posted the full image of this interesting plant in workshop