February 23, 2015: The Swansong of an Aged Agave

This 80-year old Agave plant will be cut down next month. After 80 years of growth at the University of Michigan's Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, it finally flowered last spring and has now gone into decline. It reached 28 feet tall after a final growth spurt just before it flowered.



Story

Oh, American agave...


I was thinking blue agave, and was about to holler "Mas tequila!!!"

Doesn't the blue agave take like 100 years to mature?

I want to know how it survived MI winters sticking way the hell out of the greenhouse like that?
Hmm, maybe that rapid growth spurt last Spring, just before it blew it's load, pushed it outside. That picture was taken last July 13th. That ties it all together.

I like this IOTD!
Almost 40 years ago a Century Plant (Agave sisalana) sent up a stalk like that over the second floor roof of my mother's apartment building in Alhambra, California, bloomed spectacularly and produced hundreds of "pups," little clones that looked like Brussels sprouts.
I brought a shopping bag full of these home to Mendocino County and handed them out to friends, acquaintances and neighbors.
All of them seemed to start to grow and thrive, but everyone left them outside the next winter and they froze and died.
Except mine, which I had indoors. For the next 30 years.
At about five feet tall and six across, it finally outgrew the front room and I had to move it outdoors and replant it in a really big pot.
Then I had to build a cart to move it into the garage every time frost or freezing was expected, i.e. most nights from October to May.
I did that last night and will bring it back out to the sun today. And again tomorrow.
I wonder if it will bloom before I die.
If not, I hope the kids take care of it.
It looks like this:
http://www.serragardens.com/plantsSG...0variegata.jpg

An agave THAT special...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim I like this IOTD!

it was the way it stuck out of the top of the greenhouse that amused me

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim All of them seemed to start to grow and thrive, but everyone left them outside the next winter and they froze and died.

There are quite a few varieties of Agave, most with heavy succulent leaves with sharp thorns. These can be huge and produce the massive blooming trunks shown above. They easily survive frost and even mild freezing temperatures and can provide the raw material for the painstaking process of making mescal.
Agave sisalana plants such as mine are smaller and lighter, have smooth leaves and are grown in large fields for their fiber, a source of rope and other products. They can be damaged or killed by even mild frost. They are harvested after five or ten years and rarely reach the blooming stage.

Why they want to cut down now? Its 80 who knows it may live another 80 years also.

Clipping Path Express

Appreciate.

A nice surprise to see this thread come around.

The link I posted last time no longer leads to info about A. sislana, so here is a new one:
https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v...na_(Sisal).htm

I moved my ever-growing, never-blooming 40+ year old plant to a 50 gallon planter bucket, so now the whole works weighs somewhere around 300-400 pounds. I had to build a new cart with heavy duty railroad station casters to move it in and out of the cold. In tonight for possible snow.

Clipping Path Express?

Drive-through circumcision?

Not Appreciate.

It's a website, clipping path express is. I almost reported the post to the Moderators Most High, but it's not a link.

It's awful close to a link.

Sounds like a bad Chinese restaurant.

What Gravdigr said.
If he runs a clipping service then he must know a lot of things.

I don't know how I missed this thread the first time around--but we had a century plant freshly blooming in the front yard of the first house we bought. It was in the little bed by the mailbox at the corner of the driveway, so you could see it sticking above the roofs from anywhere on the street.

And then our neighbor came over and said his brother made didgeridoos and asked if he could cut it down and give the stalk to him. And Mr. Clod said yes, thinking the guy meant eventually, or when it was ready to die, or whatever, and the next day we came home from work and it had been hacked right off at the base.

I'm 99% sure the whole didgeridoo thing was a lie, he just hated the 20-foot stalk for some bizarre reason. It's not like it was close enough to have fallen on his car or anything.

Oh! Also!

Turns out the insides of those plants are super toxic to the skin, as bad as poison ivy. Which we learned the hard way when Mr. Clod tried to chainsaw the remaining overgrowth out so we could re-plant the bed.

I have never heard of any toxicity for agaves, but I hope your neighbor had a special allergy.

Today is the second day of the final chapter of my Agave (AKA century) plant.
I think it is possible that I have given it something of brief to detailed lookover every day for 45 years.
I look at the central core spike of tightly wrapped future leaves (fronds? swords?) sometimes giving the next one in line a little encouragement and watching it pop free and begin its independent life of spread out ray catching. It will slowly over several years move down until it is on the bottom row, losing it springiness and chlorophyll and eventually needing removal.
Forty-five years.
Yesterday the central always-green leaf factory had been replaced by a red-tinged torpedo shaped bulb almost a foot long and appearing to my eye to be full of the pent up energy it will need to turn in to a 15+ foot stalk.
Boy howdy!
The history of the plant is above in this thread. A few years ago I spoke with a succulent nursery owner who tried to prepare me for the fact that it might lack whatever conditions it needed to ever bloom. I'll call her today.
I don't know how long the blooming and dying phase takes, but I will update and add photos as it progresses.

How exciting!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim ...I spoke with a succulent nursery owner...

Congrats on yer agave milestone, btw!

Pictures, we need pictures.
A local agave at Longwood Gardens popped this summer.
Are these plants trying to tell us something?

Agave

Well, there's a pic somehow after pushing buttons in a just slightly less than random fashion for a half hour.
That is the first sign of the flowering stalk. It's grown about three
more inches in two days.

sweet thanks. sorry for your impending loss

Wow this is so cool DJ.

How do I reduce the pic to fit better?

I usually use paint.net and then re-upload

agave week two
Attachment 71686

Getting better, that picture is 17.778" x 13.333".
What kind of tree is that planted next to?

This is amazing.

The plant is still movable in a big pot but has pretty much outgrown its cart.
So it is parked next to one of two poplar trees that shade my house. I have pruned them to be heavy on the side away from it and cross my fingers in wind storms.
They were big when I moved in almost 50 years ago and the great cooling they provide comes at the price of mucho leaves and a root-bumpy lawn.

I am hoping the flowering process finishes before the first frost.
Recent reading has revealed what an amazingly complex thing that process is.
It does resemble an asparagus spear at this point and is related distantly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by monster This 80-year old Agave plant will be cut down next month. After 80 years of growth at the University of Michigan's Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, it finally flowered last spring and has now gone into decline. It reached 28 feet tall after a final growth spurt just before it flowered. Story

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim I am hoping the flowering process finishes before the first frost. Recent reading has revealed what an amazingly complex thing that process is. It does resemble an asparagus spear at this point and is related distantly.

Agave Week 3

Gaining 1 to 2 inches a day, It has little branch starters inside the new leaves,
It knew how to do this, now we'll see about branches and flowers.
It is using all of its 45 years of storing energy and resources. Reminds me of salmon.
Feeling like Goldilocks with picture size.

I hope that pot doesn't tip over from the extra weight on that side.

I thought this thing was huge or something...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gravdigr I thought this thing was huge or something...

Top of stalk at 9 feet today. Weighs 200-300 pounds. 45 years old. Has pleasant personality.
Gravdigr's stats?

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce I hope that pot doesn't tip over from the extra weight on that side.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim Top of stalk at 9 feet today. Weighs 200-300 pounds. 45 years old. Has pleasant personality. Gravdigr's stats?

Do I need to add a poll: Agave vs Grav now? Iiiin the west corner, weighing in at....

Actually, a little real competition has arisen in that my ID of Agave sisalana
may be wrong.
It may be Furcraea foetida, also called Mauritius hemp and Green aloe.
It is a different genus than agave, but so similar that I am not completely convinced. The flowers should be definitive.
It is nearly 12 feet tall and forming what will be branches up top.
Now a race against cold weather.