In 2024, I happened to check out one of the plant auction sites, and was shocked to see a listing for an edged form of Agave utahensis ssp. utahensis var. nevadensis. I had only seen one listed twice before, and each time, the price for a tiny, unrooted division topped $10,000 USD. Both times, the plant offered was the cream-edged clone, Agave utahensis ‘Navajo Princess’. This $3,000 listing was for a 5 gallon-sized, new, un-named clone. With the slow growth rate of variegated Agave utahensis, this plant was easily 50-80 years old. Despite the cost and the gamble, this opportunity was too good to bypass.
A couple of weeks later, our plant arrived, looking as good in person as it did in the auction photo. Since it was a one of a kind, we got to chose the cultivar name, for which we selected Agave ‘Liberty’. Since our plant was shipped without roots, the the first step was to put roots on it, which took almost six agonizing months. Once rooted, the next step was to force it to offset, which this plant doesn’t do naturally. Time was of the essence because a plant of this age could switch to flowering mode any minute, and once it does so, there’s no way to salvage it. Our typical technique to induce a non-offsetting clone to produce pups, is to drill out the central meristem, but we’ve found that plants of this age simply don’t respond well to that technique.
Our best option for a plant this old was to using a different technique and behead the plant. Using a hand saw, we picked a spot to cut that would hopefully leave us with meristematic tissue both above and below the cut. If not, our experiment would be a a complete loss. If we are successful with our cut, we will be able to re-root the top. Our hope is also that the bottom piece will eventually resprout. Based on past experience, it will take between a year and a year and a half to know if we’ve been successful. Looks like we’ll have our fingers and toes crossed for quite a while.
Tony
It looks like your gamble paid off.
I’ll not worry so much in the future when I gamble on a plant or plants that come in at the $100-$300 mark. I’ll tell my wife to “Give me a little plant liberty or give me death!”! Haha! You may be seeing my obituary soon after this post.
Perhaps Plant Delights should tap into the ‘ultra-rare’ plant market? At several $1000 per plant JLBG may be able to have that endowment fully funded in short order!
Greg
This upper end of the plant collectors market is quite small, and has shrunk dramatically from where it was during COVID.
Hope this works! As an Agave enthusiast in Salt Lake City, UT the number of variegated plants I can grow is limited.