Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Agave palmeri

Friday, June 19, 2009

Agave palmeri

Agave palmeri flower stalk June 2009

Agave palmeri November 2008

Agave palmeri in snow December 2008

Agave palmeri with Agave parryi October 2008

Agave palmeri occurs on rocky hillsides, grasslands & oak woodlands in the states of Arizona, Chihuahua, New Mexico & Sonora. Oddly enough, it was the most successful & beautiful Agave in my Seattle garden. It doubled in size each year to 18 inches tall & 2 feet wide in 2008 after 4 years in the ground. It produced a flower stalk 15 feet tall in 2009, then died, as is their habit. The leaves are blue-gray, gracefully curved outward then upward, lined with small black teeth & tipped with wicked black spines. Keep Agave palmeri out of the way of foot traffic! Plant it in full sun in a rockery, on a dry slope or in a pot in gravelly soil. I got my plant from Yucca Do Nursery. It has also been available from Plant Delights Nursery.

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This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.