Century Plant - Update

As you can see it's quite tall. I went out and measured it this morning - just over 10' tall, straight as an arrow. The jacaranda tree is in total bloom now as well.

Century Plant Update

It's starting to bloom up top now. As you can see it's quite tall. Taller than our cactus that is beside it to be sure. Remember, Just click on the image to make it bigger. This picture was taken in the early morning as you can see by the light - about 6:30am

Century Plant Update

So much for my promise of photographing it every day.....but I suppose this is a little more dramatic. We went out last night and we both swore when we came home a few hours later that it had grown 6" since. In the wee hours it also rained so G-D only knows what it's going to do now. As you can see it is quite a bit taller in the 7 days since the last shot. I tried to take the picture from the exact same spot.

The Century Plant is at it Again!

Our black tipped agave is at it again. Another one of the plants is flowering. This is quite an amazing process as it grows by leaps every day. I usually measure it in feet, not inches. So I'm going to catalog this one as well and take a picture of it every day or two from the exact same spot and see how big it gets. I think I tried this last time but had to move back after it got too high. We shall see.

More on the Growing "Century" Agave

Here's my research -- The leaves are 10 to 18 inches long with long, sharp, terminal spines and shorter spines along the edges.(I can attest to the sharpness as they pierced my ankle and caused quite a bit of bleeding when i was thinning out this area of the garden) The stalk can be up to 4 inches in diameter. (It certainly is 4") Members of the Amaryllis Family (wow, that's interesting....) , century plants take many years to flower, although not a century. (Ours has never flowered in the 13 years we've been in this house) Yellow flowers composed of 6 petals, bloom June through August. Flowers grow in clusters and face upward at the end of horizontal branches, appearing only near the top of the stalk This unique native plant has a tall, thin stalk from 10 to 14 feet high that grows from a thick basal rosette of gray-green leaves.

The Century Plant provided Native Americans with a source of soap, food, fiber, medicine and weapons. Agavi americana, can grow up to 40 feet high (holy crap! That's high.....I guess there will be more pictures) with much longer leaves and larger stalk. This American Century Plant is sometimes grown in southern California as an ornamental. It is used commercially in Mexico as a source to produce the liquors tequila, pulque and mescal. (yum.....tequila)

You'll notice how the plant is now above the wall of the patio.....The difference between this photo and the previous is 48 hours.