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 nothing viable inside. This usually occurs when we make what’s known as a wide cross, using more distantly related species.

The stalk below is from a plant of Agave x ovatispina that flowered this year. Agave x ovatispina is itself a previous hybrid we made of Agave flexispina x Agave ovatifolia. We flowered our first clone of Agave x ovatispina last year, and it produced no viable seed, so we’re hoping for better luck with our second clone.

As you can see below, we had seed pods form.

When we opened the pods, we found that most of the seed (those colored tan) are not viable. Only a few black seed (potentially viable) were present.

The interesting thing we noticed was that viviparous (clonal) bulbils had formed on the top of the stalk. This trait occurs on a few agave species, including occasionally on Agave ovatifolia. While these plants are clonal, we often see variegation appear on these plantlets, so they’ve been planted as we wait to see what emerges.