Octopus agave bulbils: is there such a thing as "too many?"

Five years ago friends of ours adopted an octopus agave (Agave vilmoriniana) I'd removed from the driveway bed. They planted it in the meadow garden in their front yard where it was much happier than it had been at our house.

This spring it started to send up a flower stalk, signaling the beginning of the end. Here's a sequence of photos from our friend Paul showing the progress of the inflorescence:

Agave vilmoriniana is solitary during its lifetime but it employs a sure-fire propagation strategy to ensure its genetic material lives on: It produces bulbils, miniature clones that form on the inflorescence after the flowers are done blooming. This is not unusual--several agave species make bulbils--but Agave vilmoriniana seems to be particularly good at it.

Our friend Paul cut the bulbil-laden flower stalk into several sections to make it easier to harvest the bulbils. But he quickly realized that there are far more bulbils than he could ever give away.

After filling four planting trays, Paul decided that giving away entire sections of the flower stalk is the way to go

When Paul offered to share their bounty, I gladly accepted, thinking he would bring us maybe a dozen bulbils. Imagine how surprised we were when we opened the front door and saw Paul standing there with this:

The flower stalk section he gave us measures 28 inches:

Amazing how densely packed these bulbils are! 

Does anybody want to venture a guess how many bulbils there are on our 28" section? Hundreds? Thousands?

You'd think that all these plantlets are more than enough to ensure that there will be a next generation. But this Agave vilmoriniana isn't taking any chances--it has even produced seeds! Talk about determination!

As you can see, some of the bulbils are much larger than the others. They could easily be put in 4" pots now.

Now you may be wondering what I'm going to do with a zillion Agave vilmoriniana bulbils. Don't worry, I don't have any plans to open an octopus agave nursery. I'm going to pop off a few bulbils for myself and take the rest of the flower stalk to the next meeting of the Sacramento Cactus and Succulent Society this coming Monday, August 27th. Stop by if you're in the area and get your own bulbil! 

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