Laura, it's a flower stalk and your plant is some type of agave, not sure which. You might as well let it grow and enjoy it since after it blooms the plant will die. But the good news is that after it blooms it will have hundreds of tiny bulbils on the stalk. You can plant one and grow a new plant.

Thank you both for your comment and help! I had no idea! Really appreciate it! :-)

One more question please... what does one do with all those babies? I've read there are going to be a LOT.

I had a much larger agave bloom earlier this year. The stalk was about 23 feet tall and there were hundreds of bulbils. I stuck about half a dozen in the ground where I want to grow another one. Two have died but five are still alive. I harvested another dozen of the largest ones and put them 3 to pot in potting soil and perlite in some old 1 gallon plastic nursery pots. They are in partial shade and are looking much better than the in ground ones. I plan on repotting them in 1 gallon pots as they grow. I may give some away and trade the rest to a small mom and pop cactus/succulent nursery near me for another plant. After that I cut down the stalk and put it out at the curb with a Free sign explaining what they were. Several people took some. After a few weeks I cut up the stalk and put it in the green waste container.

Of the 100s and 100s of babies, I saved these bulbils - just put the end slightly in the ground and let it do its thing.

I tried to get some healthy replacements for the plant that bloomed, and I tried to get any with unusual marking - quite heavily variegated, all green, bi-color. And I potted up over 50 of them to root. (and there's another flat that is missing)

The albino bulbils didn't grow, as expected. Highly variegated plants were much slower to grow and they have been slowly reverting to marginated form. The highly variegated coloring is not stable in most cases.

I gave a lot of babies to friends, many to the local parks, and we posted a notice on Next Door for folks to come get the babies if they wanted them.

These are some of the 20+ babies that were around the bottom of the plant. They are pretty large and my neighbors laid claim to most of those! LOL

Hi, can you tell me if my attached photo is the same plant, I would love some comments

Yes it is blooming, but from the little bit I see of the plant it doesn’t really look like an Agave, but possibly a Furcraea. Agave and Furcraea are both in the family of Asparagaceae, and both are monocarpic.

Could you take a pic of the actual plant?

You don't show the bottom of the plant, but I bet it's huge. I had these giant 'candles' on my Agave californica. The side-arms are called candlelabra, and the flowers.... candles. Most have red flowers that get a yellow pistil and stamen... thus they appear to be lite candles.

How tall does it get?