Shaw's Agave

The agaves that Sean gave me have been sitting in the back of the truck for months now. Alex and I tried to move them but they were just too heavy for the two of us.

I even tried cutting off a bunch of the lower leaves to make them light enough to move but it wasn't enough. I finally had to enlist the help of my burly friend Bill and the three of us managed to get them out of the truck and up the stairs. 

They'll probably end up sitting in the front yard for months but at least I can use my truck again. 

I am eager to get them in the ground though. They are already sending out new roots so they seem eager as well. They need to go a fair distance up the hill so I might have to schedule a little agave moving party and invite a bunch of people. Who wouldn't want an invitation to a party like that? Maybe I could pay them in agave pups. I have a bunch all potted up a ready to go.

Shaw's Agave

When it rains it pours. I just wrote about seeing some Agave shawii growing in San Diego and then finding a little potted one for sale at Theodor Payne. This week my friend Sean asked me if I wanted some mature agaves that were removed from the Aquarium of the Pacific to make way for their new penguin exhibit.

He wasn't sure what they were but sent the picture below. I'm not sure either, but they look an awful lot like A. shawii. From the photo I thought they were about a couple feet across but when I saw them in person they seemed huge. I brought Alex thinking the two of us could lift one but I couldn't even budge it.

Luckily, Sean arranged to have someone forklift them into my truck.


Three of them totally filled the bed of the truck. It was overwhelming and awesome. The plants are beat up from being moved around so much but they should bounce back in a couple years. There are already new offsets coming out, so even if these are stressed into blooming I should get some pups to spread around.

Now I just have to figure out how to get them out of the truck and up the hill. Alex thinks we should drive the truck up the dirt road to the top of the hill and then drag them down. That sounds a lot easier than carrying them all the way up.

While we were at the Aquarium we also got to meet Parker the sea lion.

And by "meet" I mean shake flippers with and get kissed by.

I've shaken a sea lion's flipper before but this was my first kiss (and Alex's). It was surprisingly long and gentle. And offered in exchange for a fish.

Both Parker and the agaves were worth the visit to Long Beach. Thanks Sean!

San Diego

Alex was in a bike race in San Diego on Sunday so we went down a couple days early to hang out. On Saturday we went to Balboa Park to check out the gardens. The Botanical House was fun because it was full of plants that I've never grown. It was shady and cool inside.


There were a few extreme verigated plants like this Ficus aspera, or Clown Fig.

The internet describes it as a house plant but this one is about 20 feet tall. It's fruit were like little striped beach balls and the leaves were a really sharp white and green.


Another was this Monstera deliciosa. I've never seen a varigated form of this plant but I've always loved the big leaves with their splits and perforations. I also love how it climbs walls and gets huge. Seeing these plants made me fantasize about a conservatory attached to the house where I could grow more tropical plants.


There was also a Begonia show going on. I don't know anything about Begonias but it was interesting to see that the patterning on the leaves extends down to the stems.


There is a nice desert garden that has some well established specimens. I might need to find place for one of these platter shaped Opuntias. I'm not sure what kind this is but it looks pretty formidable.


I want to think that this is Agave potatorum. It's bigger than mine, but mine was in a pot.


I was also drawn to this smooth leaved agave. It was as tall as me.




I thought this plant was a yucca but there were a couple more nearby that had agave-like bloom spikes.


They even had a couple of big clumps of bulbils growing on the spike. I thought maybe I could break off a couple to try to propagate them at home. I wouldn't normally do this without permission, but all of the bulbils on the more advanced spike were brown and withered, so it seemed unlikely that any caretakers were going to harvest the green ones. I figured taking one or two wouldn't hurt.

Unfortunately the whole clump broke off (um, whoops).


We also went to Point Loma near where Alex used to be stationed. It has a little museum about the first lighthouse that was built there.

The lighthouse was cute and all, but I was more interested in the agaves that were growing on the sandy cliffs. There were large clumps formed of almost columnar plants that radiated out of a common center.

They had really robust, short fat bloom spikes. This one was 4 or 5 inches in diameter.

It only took a quick search of "Point Loma Agave" to learn that it is called Shaw's Agave. San Marcos Growers says that it is endangered and rare in Southern California but more common further south.

Just by coincidence, I went to the Theodore Payne Fall sale this weekend. They had one Agave shawii left. It's rare that I have my wishes fulfilled so immediately.