Last week, we were repotting our container agaves prior to winter, when we ran up on this unusual sight. Let me begin by explaining that there are three groups of agaves, based on how they propagate: solitary agaves, rhizomatous agaves, and offsetting agaves. While it’s not unusual for a rhizomatous agave to produce an underground shoot in container, this level of underground shoots is highly unusual. What is even stranger is that this is a non-rhizomatous cultivar.

Since some agaves are poor or non-offsetters, the only way to force them to multiply is to remove the apical bud, either by means of coring, or drilling. Once this is done, the agave usually forms offsets in the remaining leaf axils. For some reason, when this plant of Agave ‘Ripple Effect’ was cored, it went nuts by developing underground rhizomes.

Left to its own devices, there will be one plant produced from the growing tip of each rhizome. There is, however, a dormant bud every few inches along the rhizome, so in theory, this could produce hundreds of plants if we can figure out how to make the dormant buds break. Below are the shoots after we unwound the twisty rhizomes.