Thank you for the kind words, Kristi and Karen. The goal is connection.
Faridat said:So guys and gals, if the flowering part/stem is cut, does it mean that the mother plant can survive? If it all the mother plant energy is reserved?
Are you talking about Kalanchoes or agaves? I guess the answer would be the same. I actually did that experiment when my Kalanchoe luciae first flowered, a few years ago. As soon as I determined it was bolting (fairly early on), I took a knife and cut away the flower, to the base.
That made no difference as far as the death of the mother plant. There were offsets at the base afterwards so that space in the garden remains occupied.
In the case of agaves the decision to flower can be made many months in advance (like Stush says), and a bunch of metabolic changes have happened by the time the inflorescence is visible. So it's pretty irreversible at that point. Cows and other livestock like to eat the budding inflorescences of our native agave, and pretty frequently in areas where they overlap you'll see dying plants whose inflorescences never got taller than a foot or so before they were grazed away.
Maybe there is a point of early intervention, if your timing is just right, where surgery would prevent death and instead promote branching.
There is quite an art and a science to figuring out when agaves are about to flower. The agaves used to make fermented beverages are harvested toward the end of their life, and pulque is actually made from material (aguamiel) collected from the core of a mature agave as it converts starch to sugar.
