Tourists may snap pictures of palms, but here in Southern California, the backbone of many gardens is none other than the agave. Before this hardy plant flowers and dies, it can deliver years of ...

A high priority is spacing pups to accommodate growth. Most mature agaves generate offsets (rhizomatous suckers) called “pups.” This is a vegetative or asexual method of reproduction. These are new ...

While California’s persistent drought does not have a gardener’s attention these days, we should assume that it will return. Both drought and unusual rains could be indicators of climate change. The ...

Agave (Asparagaceae) is a succulent, related to asparagus and native to Mexico. There are over 250 varieties of agave cultivated today. Agave is often confused with aloe, and is sometimes called ...

Agaves are succulents primarily found thriving in the warm climate of the southwestern United States, where they can grow to be enormous. Grown for their interesting beauty of leaf forms, they require ...

Beautiful and sculptural; these are two terms often used to describe both aloes and agaves. Aloes and agaves are two groups of succulents that do extremely well in our hot climate, with little or no ...

Walnut Creek’s Ruth Bancroft is a national authority on drought-resistant gardening. Twice a month she and her staff share their knowledge with readers. Agaves are dramatic garden plants, with their ...

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. Not all agave are giants. The cabbage head agave (Agave parrasana) is relatively petite and visually coarse. As the name implies, cabbage head ...

We recently featured the unusual inflorescence of a pineapple mountain (Ochagavia litoralis), a Chilean bromeliad. The plant has grown in my garden since 2018 and bloomed for the first time this year.

We are now entering the spring-to-autumn season when Agaves propagate. This is a timely opportunity to get familiar with this interesting plant genus. Traditionally, the genus Agave includes about 170 ...

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, wait, it’s an incredibly tall flower that’s in perfect bloom in West Raleigh. The century plant (Agave americana) doesn’t take a full century to bloom, but it still ...