Wendy Hodgson/Annals of Botany

Agave phillipsiana is an example of remnant populations of plants domesticated and farmed by pre-contact peoples that persist in today’s Arizona landscape.

A team from the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix has rediscovered a half-dozen agave species that have remained unchanged since before Europeans arrived in the Southwest — and perhaps far longer.

Their research appears in the journal Annals of Botany.

Before indigenous peoples living in what is now the Southwest U.S. and northern Mexico began growing corn, agave was king.

Cultivated by several early cultures, including the Hohokam people, the plants provided a key source of carbohydrates, fiber and drink and played a major economic and social role for at least 9,000 years.

Today, other American plants like corn, potatoes and tomatoes have been extensively modified. But agaves reproduce both sexually — via flowers and seeds — and asexually, through structures that produce clones.

Some of these genetic duplicates have propagated to the present day and offer a unique chance to study ancient cultivation and improve conservation.

“It is hoped that our work, made more fruitful as a result of input from archaeologists and Indigenous Peoples, will foster our understanding of today’s landscapes as legacies of past human activities, rather than pristine environments,” said the paper’s lead author, Wendy Hodgson, in a press release.