Tag Archives: zombies

Mangave zombies

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One of many great attributes of mangaves, compared to one of their parents, agaves, is that they don’t die after flowering. Agaves are mostly monocarpic, which mean that they behave like bromeliads, where each rosette grows to maturity, then dies after flowering. Those species of agave which offset, live on after flowering, by means of un-flowered offsets. Those agave species which don’t offset are a one and done after they flower and reproduce by reseeding.

By incorporating manfreda genes to create xMangaves, the monocarpic trait disappears. After a mangave flowers, it dies to the ground, but like a good zombie, it soon pops back from the dead. Here is a current photo from the garden of two clumps of xMangave ‘Blue Mammoth’. The first, larger clump has not flowered, but should do so next year. The second clump with all the offsets, flowered in 2020, and re-grew to this point in 2021. Next year, the rosettes will continue to re-grow in size.

Got Cicads? We’ve got Cicada Killers

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I noticed this odd soil formation in the garden this week and checked with our staff entomologist Bill Reynolds, who identified this as the nest of a Cicada Killer Wasp. These large, yellow banded wasps which we see around the garden, capture and paralyze cicadas, then bring them back to their in-ground lairs. The wasps drag the stunned cicadas into the mound and proceed to lay eggs in their paralyzed bodies. The eggs, then hatch and use the cicadas for food, eating the non-vital body parts first, so their food source remains alive as long as possible. When the hole is full of cicada bodies (generally less than a dozen), the wasps seal up the entrance, leaving no trace of what’s going on underneath. Sounds like a real-life zombie storyline.