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Agaves

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One spring afternoon, I noticed an odd plant in a nearby yard. The plant, a huge clump of leathery, blue-green leaves nearly as tall as I am, sprouted a stout green flower stalk from its center. Each foot-wide, six-foot-long leaf grew upwards and then drooped over, pointing a stilletto-spined end outwards. The flower stalk looked like a giant asparagus stalk and gave away the odd plant’s identity — a common century plant or agave.

Agaves, characteristic of New Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert and grasslands, live surprising lives. Agaves spend their first 5 to 35 years quietly growing a clump of long, stiff and leathery leaves in which they store food and water. But once mature, these succulent relatives of lilies squander all on one glorious-but terminal-burst of reproduction. A flower stalk spurts from the center of the leaf rosette, growing as fast as a foot a day and up to 15 feet tall. As the stalk grows, it draws its energy and water from the now-withering leaves. Soon dozens of buds swell along the stalk, and eventually open at night into big, tubular flowers that emit strong, musky fragrances, attracting bats, insects and other pollinators. By the time the flowers have matured into seeds, the agave plant itself is gray, shriveled, dead.

Large agaves and some nectar-feeding bats have a special relationship. The bats migrate north just as the agaves bloom; the big plants depend on the bats for cross-pollination. Agave flowers are specially designed for these bats: They smell like rotten meat, a scent attractive to the bats; grow on tall stalks, making access easy for the hovering drinkers; their nectar secretions peak between 8 and 10 o’clock at night when the bats are most active; and the nectar is high in the exact nutrients that bats need for fuel.

Agaves once supplied food, fiber for rope and cloth, soap, and other necessities for desert-dwelling people. Southern New Mexico’s Mescalero Apaches are named for their trade in and diet of mescal, Spanish for “agave.” Mescal pits-rock-lined pits built for roasting the young flower stalks and the succulent heart of the leaf rosette-are common Southwest archaeological sites. People in northern Mexico still harvest and roast agave to produce pulque, which can be distilled into mescal and tequila. So much bootleg mescal is now being produced that wild agave populations are in danger from overharvesting.

For the next several weeks, I watched the agave flower stalk spurt upwards. Then came tragedy: Just before it burst into bloom, I found the stalk lying on the ground, felled by a chain saw. The withered plant was uprooted, dead. How sad to cut the big plant’s life short just before its final burst, and deprive the bats, hummingbirds, moths and other pollinators of their banquet!

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