I am upset today.
New message from: northtexascoldhardypalms; Im almost positive i sent a message along with the PayPal refund for these seeds. We ran out and only have seedlings available for the foreseeable future.
No I didn't get the refund and if I didn't brother to check, I would never find out. Was looking forward to these. If you give them a below 4 star rating, they refuse to sell anything to you again even years later. Might still do so.

That sucks. I have not bought any seeds from them, but have had some relatively bad experiences with seed sellers on eBay. I now stick with Koehres and RarePalmSeeds (though have had some duds among stuff I got from that one) for seed buying. Mainly because those are always recommended by friends who grow from seed at lot more and are way more successful at growing from seed than I am.

The A. parryi seeds are doing great. Purchased from UnusualSeeds on Ebay. All the way from Beograd, Serbia. Sent 10 seeds with a tiny one making 11 in the bag. Soaked them in warm water with Rootone and after a hour they all sank. Then put them in grit/compost mix with Chamomile tea bag leftovers. (Daisy trick). Counted 9 so far.
They also send Aloe peglerae, 5 seeds as a free gift. They are rare and endangered. So far none have germinated. Was hoping to get at least one.
After being ripped off with over sea seed orders this one paid off. I once got some from China that was ok but many more that wasn't. I will never buy seed again from China. The ultra low price should be a give-a-way that you will be ripped off.

Stush, You mentioned seeing an Agave americana 'varagata' the size
of a pick up truck.
Probably some here thought you were kidding. Well here is my mother plant. It is about 15+ years old and probably will bloom any day now. The orange stick in the photo is a yard stick. I measured this plant at 15 feet from tip to tip at ground level and nine foot five inches tall
from ground to the top.
Agaves seem to think Hawaii is paradise. A feeling I share with them.
Our growing conditions seem to be perfect. I live in the Ka'u desert on the Big Island where my humidity averages 60%, today it was 92F in the shade.
My annual rainfall is 7" in a bad year, with a normal around 18" and a great year at 28"
The other side of the island just got 52 inches in three days.

Thigs, There is one pup at the base, so does that make it an
Agave mapisaga or americana?
I know it will make a lot of pups when it blooms as all its local compatriots do.



My Agave furcraea has started to bloom. This plant is maybe 10 years old.
I guess this family is just a short lived species. The A. sisalina have short life too.


A big disappointment for me is that my Mangave has started to bloom again.
The pups on the side started last year when the mother bloomed in October.
Do they only live for one year?




This is Mangaves flower last year. How do I pollinate? I tried with a paint brush.
Anybody venture to give this noid a name?

More about my favorite Agave victoriae-reginae.
When they grow large enough (softball size) the plant will stay as a singleton.
By that time I have transplanted it many times and separated the pups for sale.
Here is a 3 inch pot, ready to break up.



hear is a larger one about 10+ years old. Still has some pups.



And when I separate the pups again I get a singleton plant.
This one is about 20 years old, with no pups for the last 10 years.



A friend gave me this plant which is also an A. victoriae-reginae
What is the difference?

This Agave lopantha quadricolor is more prolific than my A. americana



I have two different Agave americana on my property.

Thigs, Maybe you can help me with the difference.
I brought this one to Hawaii with me from Tucson.
I call it "Blue Agave" is that correct?




This second one also lives on the big island. The pattern is different

Bob,

Those are some nice plants!

Your variegated plant really reminds me more of A. mapisaga than A. americana. The mapisagas they have at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix are just as floppy with curly leaves, none of the truly large americanas I have seen are that floppy, but people have been calling these A. americana variegata for a long time now so we will probably not easily figure out the true heritage of that plant.

The pictures of your americanas are definitely distinct. The second plant looks a lot like the landscape americanas you can see all over the place here in the landscaping, to me that is a classic A. americana. The first one could be what people are calling A. americana var. expansa which is definitely pretty blue and has smaller teeth. That plant also looks like something that I have which is probably Agave lurida, but came to me as Agave 'sawtooth' a name a friend gave it because he did not know for sure what it was. Not quite a classic americana and also not franzosinii. So he coined it saw tooth, not being familiar with Agave lurida.
I have a few pups of that plant and they look a lot like your first americana, and are very similar to the Agave lurida at the DBG, so that is also a possibility, but there are a good number of americana varieties out there, so that is probably it.

Bob, take a look at the flowers on your Furcraea when it blooms (and share pictures here if you can). They should be quite different from the ones on an Agave.

The Mangave in bloom also looks great... I can understand why you might be disappointed, but it's still a pretty good show. If you want to pollinate them you have to collect pollen where it is mature, using a small brush maybe, and transfer that pollen to a stigma which is receptive. The male parts should mature earlier than the female parts on an average agave flower, so you would have to look lower down on the inflorescence for the female parts, which come out one per flower. But they should be really easy to tell apart.

I don't think pollinating the plant with itself will give results too different from allowing the wind to pollinate the plant without any human intervention. If it's not self fertile, the brush will not accomplish anything. But there is certainly no harm in trying.

It's a little hard to tell the scale from the pictures, but your Queen Victoria agaves may be two different forms: the smaller, offsetting one sometimes called "compacta" and the larger, solitary one which is only grown from seed. Is that last plant a different size from the others?

Baja, The last victoria photo is the same size plant as the one before it. The only difference between them are the white lines. I made the varigated one solitary by removing the last of the pups when it was big enough. Around the size of a soccer ball. The one with fewer lines was given to me several years ago with a lot of dead 'older' leaves. I cleaned it up and put it in the ground. It seems to be happy and has grown a little. Now it is about the size of a basketball. So both are mature and I have no idea when they will bloom. I raised the varigated one from a pup and it is 21 years old. All of the other varigated ones are children of the original mother plant.

The Mangave.
So the male parts mature first and one has to pollinate a lower female bloom Stigma.
Likley that is why it did not work for me. I dusted the same flower with the pollen.
The wind did nothing. So maybe it is not self fertile.
Do they really only live one year?

Thigs, I googled A. mapisaga and it did not help. As a green Agave it is the biggest and this one of mine is huge. But of course all the varigated ones on Google were called A. americana.
Since it is not clear I will probably stick with americana. I am going to visit Huntington later this month so maybe I will see something there to convince me.
My Blue Agaves will just have to be A. americana unknown variety. I am happy with both of them. My first one does get droopy leaves and the second one is mostly an upright grower. Meaning the leaves do not bend as much as the first one.
Thanks for the input.

OrchidBob said:The Mangave.
So the male parts mature first and one has to pollinate a lower female bloom Stigma.
Likley that is why it did not work for me. I dusted the same flower with the pollen.
The wind did nothing. So maybe it is not self fertile.
Do they really only live one year?

I have no experience with your particular plant but the "Bloodspot" Mangave that I planted here branched at the apex after it flowered (after many years) and is now growing into a nice multi-headed plant.

New message from: northtexascoldhardypalms; said they have tiny seedlings of the ones I wanted seeds for. Cheap at $1.95 ea. Shipping low on First Class so I purchased two. Just as he showed and I am very pleased.









My Agave perryi seeds are just doing nothing for weeks. First time for me growing agave from seed so don't know what to expect.



That light brown stuff on the surface is Chamomile tea to cut down of fungus.

Great thread idea Stush. I am loving everyone's photos. I have a few to share. This thread reminds me to document some I have not photographed in a while. In fact it made me realize that I do not have an agave folder in my files and I do not photograph them that much. I really love looking back on older photos and seeing how much they have grown. I am going to have to remedy that soon.

Agave desmetiana 'Variegata'

Agave desmetiana



Agave bracteosa




Agave salmiana I really need an updated photo of this one. This photo is from 2016 and it is really huge now.



I have lots more to share once it stops raining I will take some new pictures. We have had a lot of rain this month.

Audrey, Love your pot agaves. Same as me with pots. In Zone 8 could you leave them outside all year?

It still freezes in zone 8, at least mine part of zone 8, so I'm curious too. It got down to 20 here in January or February this year.

I left the squid agave outside for winter for the first time last year. It snowed four times and dropped down to 13 F. degrees on our hill when it was only predicted to be 23 that night. I had it covered with an old horse blanket but I was still super worried. It was just fine!

The smooth agaves are given a pineapple cut to reduce the weight and brought inside. They cannot handle freezes at all. I grow out some pups and replace the large ones when they get to large to bring in. Old man winter gets to have them.

It is a beautiful day today. I will get out and take some more pics later after my camera charges.

Agave americana 'Mediopicta Alba' I just got this little guy I have wanted one for a while now.


Agave parryi var. truncata



Agave bracteosa 'Monterrey Frost'


Agave americana that I am getting rid of or at least moving somewhere else. I think it looks ugly where it is. The whole area needs to be redone.


Agave salmiana that has grown a lot since the 2016 photo.



Agave bracteosa

Nice plants, Audrey! Your A. salmiana looks quite different from mine. I wonder if it is one of the nice cultivars that are around like. Mr. Ripple or 'Crazy Horse', a beautiful plant and yes it has grown a lot!

My two in the ground plants escaped the attention of the camera lens during the latest round of pictures, I will have to remedy that.

Instead here a couple of Mangaves that I got from Plant Delights Nursery a while back:

Mangave x 'Mission to Mars':


and

Mangave x 'Inca Warrior':

Thanks Thijs, that salmiana was given to me by a gardening friend that visited a ranch somewhere in Texas that the owner collected agaves, bamboos, and exotic game. I wish I could have seen the place myself. Anyways, I just looked and see that is all I have it listed as in my plant list. It does look an awful lot like 'Crazy horse'. The leaves are very wide.

Nice mangaves from Plant Delights. I love orders from them. I have not done well with mangaves in the winter here. It's to bad because I saw a picture of a purple something one that was absolutely stunning.

I'm going to make everyone's photos of their agaves look really good here. Mine doesn't look great. I guess it might not even be an agave, but I think that's what it is. I collected an offset from a pile of plants that a house down the street from my brother where they had used a front-end loader to scrape it out of the corner of their lot. They were waiting to be hauled off via the dumpster. I am wary of handling spines and things that puncture me and felt like I probably wouldn't be able to keep the weeds from growing up in it, so I took the pup and planted at the deer camp down in the pasture. It's in an old rear tractor tire. At the time it seemed a good idea and location.

But what eats the agaves? It was repeatedly pulled up and chewed on. I've never caught the cattle doing it, but they could be. I just kept replanting it in the same spot and it finally latched on, but it still gets chewed on by something. Or maybe more than one critter. It also didn't like the 0F temp this winter, but it did survive. Sad thing, isn't it?


The thing is, sad as it looks, it's been making pups for the last couple of years. I counted ten today. Some smaller, some larger. They are escaping the boundaries of the tire. I'm considering detaching one and bringing it to the house and putting it in a container. I know the plant can get large. The original plant hoisted up by the front-end loader was probably 4' tall and at least an equal spread. Maybe a bit more. I know it can make lots and lots of offsets. I don't know how many there were, but it made for big pile and I chose one that was about 10-12" in diameter to rescue. I really do like how they look, but I'm still wary. I'm afraid it will need some cold protection in a container. But I probably won't have the chewing issue. Which may just mean it's going to stab me every chance it gets. Here are some of the pups.

That is an Agave for sure. Looks like an Agave americana. Lots of things will munch on Agave leaves when things are dry and hot, they retain a good amount of moisture, despite being somewhat caustic to most human's skin plenty of animals seem to not have any issues with Agave leaves....