Agave x protamericana ‘Funky Toes’ is looking fabulous in the garden today, having sailed through our cold winter in tip top shape. This unique form of the well-known North American native agave is an introduction of the former Yucca Do Nursery, from one of their collections in Northern Mexico.
In 2018, we found a streaked leaf on a potted offset. By using a technique called crown cutting, we were able to isolate the bud from the streaked leaf into a yellow center, which we named Agave ‘Funky Monkey’…photo below. Hopefully in the next few years, we’ll have enough of this new introduction to share.
Agave x protamericana ‘Funky Toes’Agave x protamericana ‘Funky Monkey’
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.
Agave ‘Ripple Effect’ with unexpected rhizomesMore offsets from Agave ‘Ripple Effect’
