century plant

To Breed or Not to Breed

We make crosses on our flowering agaves during the early summer, then in some cases, must wait until fall to see if we were successful. If we don’t get pods formed within a few weeks, we know that the particular cross was a failure, but in some cases, the cross forms pods, but there is

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A Nickel-siae for Your Thoughts

Our oldest clump of the amazing Agave nickelsiae (formerly A. ferdinandi-regis) is now over a decade old, so we’re probably within five years of flowering. Often confused with the similar Agave victoriae-reginae, this North American (Northern Mexico) endemic is somewhat similar, but has more leaves, darker spines, and more prominent leaf markings. Some seedlings offset,

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Stirring the Gene Pot

The first photo below is our hybrid century plant, Agave x ocareginae ‘Oh Victory’, from a cross we made in 2014, between Agave ocahui and Agave victoriae-reginae. The plants went in the ground in 2017. Of the eleven seedlings we selected and planted in the ground, only five have survived. Below you can see both

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Century Plants – it’s all about the teeth

Introducers of new century plant selections are challenged with coming up with appropriate cultivar names, often have a propensity to use wordplay, referring to the agaves spiny teeth. Two favorites, we photographed this week are below, Agave titanota ‘Snaggletooth’ (top), and Agave titanota ‘Sabertooth Tiger’ (bottom). Both are mutations of the same original plant, the

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Excelsior…Fit for a King

Here’s a new photo of Agave parryi ssp. huachucensis ‘Excelsior’ from our garden this week. We typically don’t have many variegated century plants that will survive our winters, but this is one of the exceptions. This superb clone was first introduced in 1967 from a small California nursery by the same name. Protection from excess

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