The unwashed name of century plant ( Agave spp . ) indicate something hap once every 100 years . Whilecentury plantsdo develop slowly and take time to bring forth a blossom spike , it blooms at 5 to 40 class of age , calculate on coinage . As the century plant develop through the class , it produces juvenile clone plantlet at its foundation , produce a clumping thicket of individual plants in pointy little potato form . An individual rosette plant dies after flower .
Types
about 200 different species exist in the genus Agave , and many are commonly yell century plants or agaves . These succulent plants with swordlike leaves , often with spines and sharp leaf tips , hail from arid , cheery habitats from the American Southwest and Florida into Mexico , the West Indies and northern South America . The Agave Americana produces one of the tumid inflorescence in the entire plant land . Thousands of diminutive yellowish blossoms occur in a improbable , fork-like husk towering as high as 25 feet . The plant stem canker that produce the inflorescence then dies .
Monocarpy
Century plants bloom once in their life and then give out , a botanical term do it as monocarpy . The entire industrial plant organism does not die , just the mature leaved rosette . The oldest rosette is called the mother plant with modest daughter pup or plantlet grow from the mother plant ’s foundation . The older mother reaches maturity date and heyday and produce seeds . Afterward , the mother ’s flush stem dry , and its leaves collapse and croak . The girl flora continue maturate , perpetuating the works colony . If no daughter plants live , the 100 plant expire out .
Manipulating Flowering
nurseryman can not draw out the life of an one-time , ripe century plant by cutting the flower stalking as it issue . Once the plant life reach due date and initiate an inflorescence , it reached the flood tide in its life . The plant may not die as promptly as if it had blossom , but it will not produce another bloom straw . It still die within 1 to 2 eld , depending on grow conditions or mood .
Comparison to Yucca
Plants in the genus Yucca resemble hundred flora . Although both are closely relate in the same plant life family and are aboriginal to the Americas , flower characteristics differentiate them . Century plants are monocarpic and their flowers are plenteous in nectar , draw attract insects or hummingbirds for pollination . By line , yuccas are polycarpic — they bloom year after yr and do not die thereafter . Yucca flowers also miss ambrosia and are almost solely pollinated by moths or squash racquet , especially at night .
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