What's happening to my Agaves?

[Vic]

Thanks for that Paul - I'll look forward to flowering! I know it ultimately means death for the mother plant but I've always wanted to flower an Agave.

Interesting you saying that your's was planted outside - I left the one producing plantlets out all last winter in it's pot, basically to see how hardy it maybe, it's lower leaves did get rather marked but obviously it survived. So perhaps this may of induced flowering.

[wadey]

congratrulations vic,
it is always a strange but rewarding feeling when you get to flower your first agave..paul has given sound advice so no need to add to it but one thing i will say is that i myself flowered a.polyacantha var. xalapensis in 2004 and it first started to develope the flower spike in 2000 so it can be a long old wait...
dave..

[Paul in Essex]

Interesting thought, that a sudden change in growing conditions might instigate flowering prematurely in some of the agavaceae. It didn't happen with my A. p. xalapensis, which had been growing relatively happily for about 4 years before it started to do it's thing, but I have had another agave flower following being uprooted and fiddled with - something that yuccas will very often do too. Plus Furcraea parmetieri (bedinghausii as was) seems to flower prematurely when shocked by cold/kept stressed by being potted. Might be something in that survival instinct thing so often bandied about, that a plant that feels it's future is threatened will flower and attempt to reproduce. Sounds sensible. I would.

As an aside The Taxonomists, bless 'em, have changed Agave polyacantha var xalapensis and it now should be called Agave obscura. Now a name change in itself is bad enough, but this is doubly confusing because there already is, or was, an Agave obscura which was in a completely different group within agave - the Marginatae - and resembled species like lophantha, funkiana et al. What the plant that 'used to be' obscura is now called I have no idea. Anyone? It is a conspiracy to muddle people up, I reckon. And Lord knows agave names are bad enough without keep changing the rotten things.

As another aside, I had the extreme pleasure of walking (stopped off for a wee, actually) through the type location for Agave polyacantha var xalapensis, now obscura, just a few km west of, er, Xalapa. Cool, damp and misty, these were mostly growing in the woods in the shade, and then out in the open in crevices in strange volcanic rock platforms that have a particular name that I have forgotten. You'd be hard pushed to tell some of them apart from Agave celsii...

....which, itself, is now called Agave mitis...

[Vic]

Thanks Dave! That is a long time - so perhaps I'll have to wait a good while yet.

[Vic]

Don't really like the name change to obscura Paul - think I'll stick to the original name. I thought there already was an obscura as you say. Why they have to keep messing with the names I have no idea!

Must of been a great experience seeing these plants growing wild - so they don't mind a little shade then.

Don't know whether to give them the hard treatment again this year and leave them out or let them have a dry warmer winter in the greenhouse - the greenhouse me thinks!!

[Agavegeoff]

Hi, Vic.

This is my A.celsii after it had put up a flower stem. Your plant looks a bit young to be flowering unless it is A.boldinghana.

Funny leaf edges is nothing to worry about I have that sometimes.

[Vic]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for that. Perhaps I shouldn't get too excited yet then.

[Vic]

Looks like Paul was right and one of my Agaves is going to flower. My other plant in the 2nd pic above still looks pretty much the same. You can see the flower stalk beginning to develop in the pic below and it has grown an inch or two since last week, lots of pups appearing too around the plant. Btw this plant has sat outside all winter as it did last winter too, the other plant being a bigger/prettier plant gets the greenhouse treatment.

[attachment 3552 IMG_0649.jpg]

[Cactus Jack]

Well done Vic!! dont tell Colin

[Julie]

Hehehe! We should all chip in and buy Colin one that's developing a flower spike.