Can't hold my breath any longer

[palmbob]

This Agave celsii NOVA flowered starting last January. It's now December. I knew it was going to die after flowering... but flowering ended completelly sometime in April. Still, it looks as good as it did before the flower showed up, though it hasn't grown a millimeter and still no signs of offsets. What is going on? Suspended animation? Not that I want it to die.. only had it for two years (now nearly 3). But I can't hold my breath any longer.

[agavegreg]

Not having grown Agave celsii 'Nova' and not having been able to get complete information about its origins, all I can say is it might take two years to die as some of my Agave victoriae-reginae have. So take a deep breath and resume living.

Greg

[Mayahuel]

Agave celsii can make many offsets at the base of the old leaves. So the It'll not be lost.

Gérard

[STEVE IN SOCAL]

Same for mine, Geoff. It gave me about 40 seed pods (I had a Furcraea roezlii flowering at the same time about 100 yds away...maybe hybrids?)
It still looks like it wants to live, no shock whatsoever. I keep thinking maybe it will offset or bulbil.

[Constantino]

That is exactly the feeling I refered to when I wrote about Dyckias and the plants that die after blooming. This is it!

These monocarpic beauties awake two contraditory feelings within us as we want the plant to bloom and at the very same time we are sorry for their after blooming farewelll.

At least they teach us how to deal with life and death in a very plain way. If they were drab not a bit gorgeous plants we could not even notice but those dazzling ones we did everything right and correct during years in a row just to see them melt, rot or dry after blooming seems to be not fair.

They do seem like plants to be fixed, repared somehow and we keep thinking on what went wrong with them. Here we call them bye-bye plants and we just sorry as much as anyone when they bloom as some of them are real beauties.

As people do some take longer to say good-bye. This one takes extra long waving good bye but it is decided to leave no doubt.

It is as if they try to make us believe beauty may not last forever. This is simply not true as beauty can last very very long so long in fact it may touch immortality as some other plants do.