ST. GEORGE, Utah — It’s a rare sight.
An agave plant is blooming for the first time at the Red Hills Desert Garden in St. George, drawing crowds to see a stalk that resembles a giant asparagus.
The plant, currently standing at about 18 feet tall, is growing approximately a foot a day. Depending on the species, agaves take between 10 and 100 years to bloom.
Ryan White, a landscape education administrator for Washington County Water Conservancy, oversees the garden and its 15 agaves.
"Some of the fun questions I get is about: 'Why does it look like a giant asparagus?' And it's because they are actually related," White said.
While agaves are the primary ingredient in agave tea, sweetener, and tequila, White advises against eating this particular stalk.
"Once the stalk gets to be this size, it's probably a bit too fibrous and chewy to eat," White said.
The massive blooms can cause issues if they get too large.
"A couple years ago, there was one in the town of Gunlock that was 50 years old and it was about a 30-foot-tall bloom. When it fell over, it actually crushed the homeowner's fence," White said.
Dozens of people, along with owls nesting in the rocks above, have visited the garden to admire the rare sight.
"Every day, there's people here just looking for that. Just looking for the agave," White said.
Carol Fenn, an agave watcher from St. George, brought her niece to see the plant.
"I told my niece, she got in town last night, I said, 'We have to go check this out because I saw it on Facebook and I've never seen an agave bloom,'" Fenn said.
Fenn's niece, Rhiannon Garrard, is a geologist from Tropic.
"There's something probably in the soil here, too, that makes the agave so abundant. A lot of the rocks we're in, they have minerals from ancient environments, and the agave probably just love it," Garrard said.
The agave will continue to bloom for another week to a month. After the bloom is complete, the plant will die.
"I see it more as a grand finale. You've grown this plant for a decade or more, and now you're getting this spectacular bloom," White said.
