Last week I dropped by my friend Darell’s place down the street to photograph the Agave filifera flowering in his front yard before he removed it. It’s a pup off an A. filifera I got for him at UC Berkeley Botanical Garden in January 2011.
Darell started to document the progress of his Agave filifera beginning in late June when the flower stalk was just under 10 ft. in height:
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| June 23, 2024: < 10 ft. |
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| June 28, 2024: 10 ft. |
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| July 10, 2024: bottom-most flower buds fully formed |
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| July 16, 2024: first flowers have started to open |
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| July 16, 2024: flower close-up |
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| July 16, 2024: flowers with pollen |
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| August 4, 2024: 16 ft. |
I took the photos below on August 13, 2024:
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| August 13, 2024: inflorescence is 16.5 ft. tall. Most flowers except for the top 3 ft. are done blooming. |
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| Rosette after Darell cut off the flower stalk |
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| The rosette was easy to remove; all we had to do was lift it up. The roots were already dead so the plant wasn’t attached to the ground anymore. |
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| Darell cut off the top part of the flower stalk for me to take home. The remaining flowers are continuing to open, and I’ve been collecting pollen to transfer to a Mangave ‘Silver Fox’ that’s about to flower in my backyard. With any luck, I’ll end up with seeds – and my own mangave cultivar. |
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| Another A. filifera just a few feet away (also a pup off the original plant) is getting ready to flower as well. The inflorescence should begin to emerge in a couple of weeks. |
In my previous post, I showed you photos of an Agave americana ‘Mediopicta alba’ in Darell’s front yard that had been killed by agave snout weevils. The two A. filifera in this post are just a few feet away from that A. americana, and yet they show no signs of snout weevil activity. This may seem like coincidence, but according to Debra Lee Baldwin, snout weevils stay away from agaves with “slender, nonjuicy” leaves like A. filifera. Darell’s experience appears to bear that out.
© Gerhard Bock, 2024. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.
Love the photos of the progress of the flower stalk! Good to know that the Agave weevils are not attracted to this type!
ReplyDeleteIt is fun to see the progression, I haven't had an agave flower yet. The flowers are quite pretty, I hope you get a spectacular cultivar out of it.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the snout weevils are choosy! As dramatic and pretty as the flowers on agaves can be, I still find it a bittersweet moment. At least Agave filifera pups well!
ReplyDeleteOh, goodness... "my own mangave cultivar" is so exciting. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteChavli