Ladew Topiary Gardens

A couple weeks ago, I took my students on a tour of Kurt Bluemel's perennial nursery.  After that tour (photos to come, no doubt) we stopped by the Ladew Topiary Gardens nearby.  More on the gardens later this week and next, but in the meantime, I am sharing photos of these lovely window boxes, planted almost entirely with succulents and Euphorbias.

Agave

So today, we are going to go back to Arizona for a bit.  I still haven't blogged about one of my favorite desert plants, the Agave.  This one below is most likely Agave deserti.  A common name for all Agave is century plant.  It's called this because the plant lives a very long time before it blooms.  It doesn't take 100 years, however, it's more like 30. 

The flower stalk grows from the center of this basal rosette of thick, fleshy, spiny leaves.  The stalk reaches anywhere from five to fifteen feet in height, growing as rapidly as 2.5 inches a day.   The flowers are yellow and can set as many as 65,000 seeds.  This is important since creating such a fast-growing blossom depletes all the plant's resources and after seeds are set, the entire thing dies. 

Agave is an important resource in the desert habitat.  Carpenter ants can live in the leaves and in times of drought (which is often) bighorn sheep chew on the leaves for their only available source of water.  Skipper butterfly larvae also rely solely on these plants for sustenance.

Below, in Central Park Zoo, there's a relative to A. deserti, A. americana. Native to Mexico, this Agave  is most often hybridized and grown as an ornamental. 

Chances are, if you like a good margarita now and then, you know that Agave is what is used to make tequila.  However, don't go harvesting either of the plants showcased in this post.  The plant you're looking for is Agave tequilana.