Mexican Peter Cottontail

While most folks think of wabbits when the hear Peter Cottontail, I can’t help but think of a very special Mexican century plant, Agave albopilosa. Agave albopilosa is simply the most amazing agave species ever discovered, and one that took the succulent world by storm when it was first published in 2007.

The small population of Agave albopilosa was discovered growing on a remote, nearly vertical, 3,500′-5,000′ cliff in the mountains southwest of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. In the wild, Agave albopilosa grows with the winter-hardy Agave bracteosa, Agave victoriae-reginae, and Agave lechuguilla. At 1′ tall x 20″ wide, the painfully slow-growing Agave albopilosa resembles Agave victoriae-reginae, which many botanists theorize was one of its ancient parents. The main difference between the two is that at agave puberty (around 3 years old) the tips of the narrow, green, upturned leaves develop little white tufts of hair.

Below is a photo of our 10 year old specimen, taken this week. Although it should be winter hardy outdoors in our Zone 7b/8a garden, we keep ours indoors for now. After a DNA sampling earlier this year, it was actually booted out of the genus agave, and into the newly created, Echinoagave.