Should be awesome; this one does not produce pups?

How fun! Take lots of pictures for us! It looks like your plant is on relatively flat ground. Mine was at the top of a raised island - I hesitate to call it a hill - and it was falling down. So I had to cut it down before it was all done. I don't know if I would have gotten some seeds in addition to all those pups.

Send me a message so I can reply to you with a link to my blooming A. desmettiana. I don't want to hi-jack your thread. ;-)

Alain - this plant is a prolific pupper. There will also be 100s and 100s of little bulbils on the stalk after blooming.

Josue and Crenda; I have a neighbor that has these in the front yard. They are fast to bloom compared to most other Agaves. I witnessed one plant bloom and put up lots of bulbils. The plant blooming this year is only producing seed pods. I'm not sure what triggers the difference.

Alain, yep! This species is a prolific off-setter. It's offsets at the base, not far from the mother plant. I have three large offsets from this plant in my backyard, and a handful of smaller ones in containers. And like Crenda said, when it blooms, it will produce thousands of little bulbils on the flowering stalk. What I like about desmettiana is that it doesn't have spines on the leaf edges, so you can get in close to remove the pups without being stabbed and poked.

Crenda, post your photos here! I like to call it collaborating, as opposed to hijacking ;) I'd love to see photos of your plant.

Aloebot - yes, they are pretty quick to bloom. I've had a number of other agave for years and they are nowhere near blooming it seems like. The flower on desmettiana is nice, it branches low and doesn't get too tall so you can enjoy the flowers up close.

This thread follows the first Agave that I had bloom. Lot of pictures!

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3394283/when-agaves-bloom

A neighbor decided to not separate pups from his plant. It looked nice clustered around his mailbox - - then they all started to bloom at the same time! There's one behind the red arrow, making 8 bloom stalks.

And then I had this goofball. Guess it was trying to do backflips!

Here's a picture of the spike as of today. It's getting the neighbor's attention!

Looking good!

Here's a photo from this chilly morning. Flower buds are starting to peek out from under the lower sheaths.

your plant is very pretty. the colors seem brighter than on mine...I wonder if it is the climate? anyway have fun with all the pups you are going to get!

Definitely looks like a giant asparagus, doesn't it? This is so fun to watch!

Thanks for all the updates. Keep them comin'.

tj

Almost there! Flower buds continue to swell

You are going to have quite a show with this, the Ceanothis (sp), and the Aloe all blooming!

Yeah! and quite by chance right? The ceanothus is my neighbour's. She also has a local native lupinus albifrons nearby that should be in bloom right around the same time. I have some local variants of California poppy that are yellow (instead of orange) so the blues and purples will look real nice with the yellow poppies and yellow agave.

Looking good! You going to let the bulbils grow? And maybe you'll get some seed.

Have you seen bees on the flower buds? I noticed some showed up early, like they wanted to be the first to sample the flowers. LOL

Yeah Crenda, I'll give away as many of the plantlets as I can. I'll keep a few to start more for myself.

I haven't seen any bees on it yet, but maybe soon?

Really nice, and I LOVE your yard!

Welp! we had a frost and most of the developing flowers were damaged. it looks like there are a number of flowers still in tact but the show is going to be much less spectacular than it was going to be.