In 2015, we were potting seedlings from our cross of two hardy century plants, Agave lophantha and Agave x pseudoferox (salmiana var. ferox of Hort.), when we found one with a tiny yellow streak on one leaf. Over the years, it grew larger until it was large enough to core, which we do to promote offsetting. The result of the coring was one plant with far more prominent streaking, but still not a solid edge, known as a periclinal chimera. In another 1-2 years when those new offsets were large enough to core again, we finally hit the jackpot with the plant we’d been hoping for, with a solid yellow border, which we named Agave x loferox ‘Sunshine Superman’. In the years since, we’ve worked to bulk it up for a hopeful 2026 introduction. Finally having a few spare plants last year, we planted a sacrificial plant outdoors for hardiness trials, fully expecting it to melt like most variegated century plants when they see a hard freeze. To our surprise, it sailed through a winter low of 18 degrees F in winter 2023/2024. Here is the same plant this December after a low temperature of 21 degrees F. We are hoping for a low near or below 10 F this year, so we can get better hardiness data, but so far, we’re pretty excited.
keep them coming, Tony
Thank you Tony for your constant devotion to pushing boundaries of what is possible with plants, imagination and time.
WOW!
wow! Impressive.
Tony & Holly Krock have stopped coring Agave plants in favor of slicing them in half vertically. Slicing an Agave yields more secondary branching, thus more potential propagules or a greater spectrum of degrees of variegation. Of course, the two Agave halves are dusted with powdered sulfur, potted and kept in a greenhouse with good air circulation.
In 2025, I’ll be slicing an A. ovatifolia X parrasana seedling as well as an Agave victoriae reginae grown from seed collected a few miles NW of Bustamante, in the state of Nuevo León. Its co-seedlings all exhibit the longer leaves typical of that northenmost population of the Queen Victoria Agave. The one to be sliced apparently had a different pollen parent. I’ll let you know what happens.
Fascinating. Always great when plant people keep experimenting with out of the box methods.