WESTMINSTER, Colo. — A beautiful, bright variety of flowers welcomes employees and visitors into Westminster's City Hall, but now there is a rare sight: a 25-year-old agave plant that's ready to bloom.
"It's great for morale, for people to be able to see this once in a lifetime, really, or once in a Westy career moment... to see this plant blooming," said Austin Cox, digital communications supervisor for the City of Westminster.
Twenty-five years ago, when Shalene Hiller first started working for the city, she planted agave plants to try to cut down on water use in the landscape. Little did she know that one of those plants would begin to blossom 25 years later in front of City Hall.
"I first noticed it was going to bloom in April, and at that point, the spike was only about two feet tall, and it has been growing ever since," said Hiller. "It's not quite blooming yet. These little pods will still open into a flower, and then it should set seed, hopefully."
While working for the city, Hiller said she has probably planted between 30 to 40 agave plants. However, this is the first time in her career that she has seen one of her plants begin to blossom.
"Agaves often go by the name century plant, but it usually takes about 20 to 30 years for them to bloom, so this one's right on target for 25 years," she said. "They will go to bloom, and hopefully these flowers will get pollinated and produce seed because the mother plant will die after blooming."
According to Chad Miller, an associate professor in the horticulture and landscape architecture department at Colorado State University, there are over 200 species of agave, with some being native to the United States.
"Agaves have a really interesting flowering process. And some might know the agave as the century plant, and it's derived from the notion that it usually takes decades for many agave to flower — 20, 30, 40, 70, 80 years," Miller said. "Many don't necessarily need 100 years, where we get this century plant moniker, but they need multiple years over time to really build carbohydrates."
Not only is this plant interesting and rare to look at, but this bloom is extremely rare because it only happens once.
"They are monocarpic, or they flower once," explained Miller. "When this mother plant, which is what we often refer to it, begins to flower, it will die after it flowers, and so the goal is that it will produce the seeds to perpetuate itself in its genetics."
While Hiller says goodbye to this plant, she is very excited to finally experience this bloom in her 25th year of working for the city.
"I'm so excited about it. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it starting to grow. I couldn't believe it," she said. "I've been waiting for so long for so many years to have anything like this out."
