Beschorneria albiflora flowering

[Paul S]

There is a danger that I am the only person on here particularly interested in this but risk posting it anyway :D

I have 3 plants that bear the name Beschorneria albiflora. Physically they look different from each other - one of them especially so with wavy margined leaves more akin to sweetcorn. The other two have flowered and are notably different from each other, plus different from pictures I have seen on the internet.

The sweetcorn form is now producing a flower spike and it is, even at this early stage, most unlike the others with a long tapered tip to the bracts. I'll chart the progress on this thread then, when it is done, post all my Beschorneria albiflora pics at the end for folks to throw darts at.

All of this reinforces my belief that several trunking species of Beschorneria exist but have been clumsily lumped under one name. 'It is a trunking Beschorneria therefore it is B. albiflora'. And don't get me started on the name as none of them have white flowers. Having read his description I truly believe Matuda, when he described B. albiflora, was looking at a Furcraea. :roll:

Anyhoo, here is the sweetcorn form - first pics a week ago:



This one taken today.

[David F]

Lots of B. albiflora here in the East Bay Area, and they get really huge here. I had some 15 year old clumps in a client’s garden get 8’ tall by 15’ across and they made a good privacy screen along the street frontage. A super easy plant to propagate from cut branches, just cut and stick in the ground.

[MartinNicklin]

I love the form of this plant and the inflorescence is magnificent. I’m on the Big Plant Nursery waiting list for one.

[Maya]

My plant flowered 2-3 years ago. It had a nice size stem at that point. It suffered badly last winter when everything stayed frozen for a week. Main stem died, but it is trying to regrow from the base.

[MartinNicklin]

I know that feeling Maya. I’ve lost I would guess 90% of my agave and aeonium collection built up over about 10 years. It’s just too expensive to heat the greenhouse. I’m going to pull the survivors from the greenhouse and plant stuff which will survive without winter heat.

[Maya]

I know that feeling Maya. I’ve lost I would guess 90% of my agave and aeonium collection built up over about 10 years. It’s just too expensive to heat the greenhouse. I’m going to pull the survivors from the greenhouse and plant stuff which will survive without winter heat.

Yes, last winter "filtered" a lot of plants as I couldn`t justify the cost of heating . I used to use propane bottles, but that became too expensive as well. Survival of the fittest. From about 7-8 puyas, only 3 survived. On a positive note, I know that these three take cold well. I planted them out last summer and they have done fine so far.

[Joel]

My first time commenting on this forum and it's great to be here! Paul that plant looks fantastic as will the flower I'm sure. My plants are from seed which came from Mike Clifford and are most definitely the "sweetcorn form". They are painfully slow from seed though and I've given most of them away over the years but still have 2 or 3 which are now 2 litre pots size after at least 6 or 7 years. My old friend Don Vickers had a plant that didn't resemble sweetcorn and I was lucky to see it in flower and facilitate it's sale after he died to a lucky buyer.

[Paul S]

Hi Joel! Good to see you here. I'll update the post with some more pics over the weekend.

How was your winter?

[Joel]

Hi Joel! Good to see you here. I'll update the post with some more pics over the weekend.

How was your winter?

I've had worse winters but the storms were pretty bad. I had to retrieve my polycarbonate structures from nearby field and re-do them properly...but no losses this time.

[Paul S]

it's going to hit the roof soon! Pointing the wrong way, too. I'm sure it will sort itself out.