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Yesterday the central always-green leaf factory had been replaced by a red-tinged torpedo shaped bulb almost a foot long and appearing to my eye to be full of the pent up energy it will need to turn in to a 15+ foot stalk.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!

Um, just how succulent was she?[/winkwink,nudgenudge]

:jig:

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? :eek:

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?