Swaying in the Breeze

The inflorescence on my Agave lophantha stalk still hasn't bloomed. I showed the stalk's rapid growth to sixteen feet in previous posts, and assumed the flower buds would open as soon as the stalk stopped growing. For the past three weeks it has just been sitting there, soaking up the sun and swaying in the breeze. Maybe it's resting, just biding time before the finale.

Right down the street from my house is a different type of Agave stalk. This Agave vilmoreana stalk is covered with bulbils, or plantlets. These grow from a bud at the base of each flower. Each bulbil is a miniature clone of the parent plant. The bulbils can stay attached to the stalk for long periods and grow larger and larger. As time passes, the plantlets will fall off the stalk and some may take root. If someone wants to plant a bulbil, they can just pull it off the stalk and plant, rather than wait for it to fall off naturally. They come right off, but care must be taken to keep the whole bulbil intact so that roots can develop once planted. There must be hundreds of baby plantlets on this stalk!

Here is another neighborhood Agave with a different type of inflorescence called a raceme. Depending on the species, some start blooming from the top, and others from the bottom, as this one is doing. There are two other types of stalks. One is called a panicle, or candelabra, and the other is a spike.

I think my Agave raceme will start from the top. No particular reason for thinking that--it's just fun to speculate while I wait.