Century Plant – A Swan Song of Nature

In visiting gardens or national parks, you never know what surprises wait for you. The last time I went to the Tumacacori National Monument (48 miles south of Tucson, Arizona, and a few miles north of the Mexican border) I came upon an unusual phenomenon, the once-in-its-lifetime blooming of a century plant.

Stepping through the archway of the cloistered walk on my way from the museum in the administration building to the old adobe mission church, I suddenly found myself transplanted into a peaceful world of a century and a half ago – walled patio garden restored in the Spanish style with which the early Jesuit and Franciscan padres first built it. The garden was enticingly shady, green and cool in an arid, hot setting. With the aid of a guide book and numbered stakes, I identified about fifty different trees, shrubs and flowers from vastly separated regions of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Orient and tropical America, as well as the United States. The padres had tried to show the natives the value of foreign flora.

In the northeast corner of the patio garden, the towering stalk of a giant maguey (Agave americana) was giving a spectacular show, bursting into bloom in a glorious finale before its death.

This succulent, so characteristic of Mexico, is rare in Arizona. Its leaves, usually needle-pointed with teeth along the edges, form a low basal rosette. Mexicans use it for fiber, soap, food and liquor. The plant propagates itself in three ways. It sends out sucker plants around its base about a year before blossoming. Seeds formed in the capsules of the flower stalk are scattered when the capsules open. Small bulblets formed in the stalk break loose, fall to the ground and send out roots, thus establishing new plants.

After fifteen or twenty years of leisurely life, this century plant started to send up an asparagus-like flower stalk. For the next two and a half months visitors watched the miracle of its phenomenal growth. The park had set up a 28-foot measuring pipe and kept a daily photographic record. The stalk grew steadily for about seventy-five days, more rapidly at first, varying from 1 to 12 inches and averaging about 5.2 inches per day. About day 45 the first branch sprouted 16 feet above ground. The main stalk continued to grow higher as the twenty or more other branches appeared. During this last thirty-day period, the branches produced masses of buds which opened into pale yellow flowers. The topmost flower was 38 feet from the ground. Then, about eight months after the maguey began its swan song, it died.

by A Richards

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