Agave salmiana

Agave salmiana is a species of the family Asparagaceae, native to central and southern Mexico. It is also reportedly naturalized in South Africa, Italy, Spain, especially in the Canary Islands, and southern Portugal.

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Agave salmiana presents a spiral-shaped rosette with large flared and erect leaves. These leaves are thick, dark green with a large point at the tip and strong spines on the edges. When a leaf has unfolded, it leaves an imprint on the leaf underneath. Like most agaves, the species is monocarpic, that is to say it only flowers once and then dies. This flowering occurs after 15 to 25 years producing a vertical floral stem, typically up to 4 m (13 ft) long and bearing greenish-yellow flowers. The largest specimens have been significantly taller. One specimen growing at the Strawberry Canyon Botanical Garden on the campus of U. C. Berkeley, Berkeley, California in 1974 produced an inflorescence with a total height of 16 m (52 ft) of which the scape or peduncle was about 12 m (39 ft) and the panicle per se was 4 m (13 ft). Hermann J.H. Jacobsen states that the inflorescence of A. salmiana has reached an overall height of 19 m (62 ft), making the inflorescence of A. salmiana the tallest of any known plant inflorescence. Old plants reach 1.8 m in height and the leaves form a rosette 3.6 m in diameter. The variety A. salmiana var. ferox is often encountered in cultivation. The epithet ferox is due to the hard and long (up to 8 cm) spines.