Agave turns on once-in-a lifetime show at arboretum

Eastwoodhill Arboretum team leader and horticulturist Anthea Dalton next to the agave geminiflora, which has flowered. The plant flowers only once in its lifetime then dies. Picture by Liam Clayton

Visitors to Eastwoodhill are in for a once-in-a lifetime display with recent “crazy weather” resulting in rare happenings at the national arboretum.

The most recent instance is the flowering of an agave geminiflora plant.

Native to the Nayarit state in Mexico, the plant  has a flower stalk that grows up to 12 feet tall and “is looking fab”, arboretum operations team leader and horticulturist Anthea Dalton said.

It is not known how long it will remain in flower.

“Sadly these plants are monocarpic, which means they will bloom just once in their lifetime and will die after flowering,” she said.

“It should set a whole lot of seed, so I will harvest as much of that as I can and see if we can have a go at propagating it.

“It takes about 15 to 20 years to flower. It was really neat to see it happen but then I did a little research and it was a case of ‘oh no’.

“This weather has been crazy. A lot of things are doing things they haven’t before.

“We have got another kind of plant that’s doing the same thing. It’s called a parsley palm . . . I have been here six years and last year one flowered and then died.

“This year, a whole heap of them have flowered and are now dying.

“It’s a really unusual season.”