Odd looking Agave "Blue Glow" bulbils
Notice anything strange about this plant!? I've been watching it develop bulbils directly from it's center for several months now. I'd assumed that bulbils grew from a flower stalk but I guess not always!
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| Agave "Blue Glow" with bulbils |
Seems odd to me but I've only been growing a handful of these plant for ~4 yrs so I'm not an expert. Has anyone else seen this behavior?
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| bulbils close up |
Here you can see the empty space left after I pulled one of the bulbils off the parent plant. The Agave bulbil came off with just a little effort and even included a few roots.
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| Detached Agave bulbils |
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| Emerging roots on a bulbil |
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| Should recover fine right? |
As far as I know this plant was not damaged in any way but perhaps it's roots were disturbed by gophers or moles (?) I'll have to dig it up to find out. It does feel suspiciously loose.
No sign of anything suspicious... Agave Weevils, Gophers, Ants etc
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| Neighboring plant with an odd looking crown |
Planted just a few feet away is another "Blue Glow" with a crown that has formed in a tight looking bunch of smaller leaves. This is not normal. I have a vague memory that the other plant started the same way.
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| Normal looking Agave "Blue Glow" in front yard |
At this point I'm not sure why this "Blue Glow" reacted the way it did. Any one else seen similar behavior?
I have a Mangave 'Bloodspot' that's developed a similarly odd center. My husband accidentally severed its bloom spike a couple of months ago, although I vaguely recall that the plant appeared to be developing oddly even before that happened. I've also seen other bloggers post photos of succulents producing offsets from unexpected sections of the plant following damage to the plant's crown. Your unexpected offsets look healthy and worth potting up!
ReplyDeleteI have seen a 'Blue Glow' do exactly this same thing in a garden here in Portland, I believe it suffered winter damage (occurring late Feb of this year).
ReplyDeleteThose offsets will root and produce mostly fine looking new BGs. I've done it several times. Here about 3/4 of them make perfectly nice new plants, and the remainder grow non-symmetrically, have strangely shaped leaves, and are generally not so pretty. If you can get a clean new symmetrically growing center from the original you can always cut that out and reroot that one if you want a more typical specimen.
ReplyDeletethe 2nd from the last plant, that's an odd one! Quite interesting. Have not seen any one like that here. Maybe errors in the Tissue Culture process?