For many people, their greatest achievements come at the end of life when they have gained great wisdom and experience. This too is so with agaves, those extraordinarily tough succulents unique to our new world deserts. Among them is locally native Agave deserti, with its twisted rosettes of blue leaves that contain a vital source of strong, yet soft fiber harvested a century ago by Cahuilla weavers. Newcomers to desert gardening discover their beautifully blooming plant cannot be coaxed to live after flowers fade. This is because agaves bloom but once in their lifetime in a spectacular effort to reproduce itself both by seed, and by cloning itself vegetatively just before death. The entire life span of an agave serves just one purpose: to store enough energy to produce an enormous flower spike. Those grown for the manufacture of tequila are harvested just before the flowers form, when sugar content is highest to enhance the fermentation process. Some species produce branching spikes with tufts of bright yellow flower clusters at the tips. Others are a single stalk sheathed in flowers. It’s believed the highly held flowers allow their scent to lure pollinators over long distances across a barren desert. Another reason for agave’s very tall spikes is bats, which relish the nectar. Eco location makes it dangerous when agaves are in a habitat filled with many other spiny or thorny plants. But with flowers high above the spines, bats easily find and feed upon the nectar, thus ensuring pollination. Each species of agave grows for a certain time span needed to accumulate these sugars. The average is about 25 years, but some may live far longer. Problems arise with short lived agaves because they may not last long enough to use in outdoor landscaping. One of our most commonly used species is dark green, vase-shaped Agave desmettiana. It is the best example of many ways agaves reproduce to sustain the species in difficult climates. After the bloom stalk sheds its flowers, small perfect plants called bulbils form where blooms detach. They are the back-up plan for reproduction because conditions are so dry that it’s rare for some agave to grow from seed in the wild. These bulbils are genetic clones of the mother plant, and when they get large enough they detach in the wind and fall, littering the ground around the mother. Here they’ll root and grow to maturity unless gathered by an intrepid gardener. This bulbil production is only found in a few species, which coincidentally include our low desert tolerant Agave vilmorniana and Agave angustifolia. When an agave is old enough to bloom it will do so in spring. My first bulbils were found in the parking lot where they littered the pavement beneath a blooming mother plant. I rescued as many as I could, stuffing them into my purse to take home to plant in the sand and shade of my irrigated garden. They were tucked into natural soil
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