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After nearly 30 years of waiting, two agave plants on the CU Boulder campus are having their moment in the sun.

The plants, which adorn an outdoor garden near the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology greenhouse on 30th Street, have started to bloom鈥攕omething听these succulents do only once in their lives, and only after decades of growing. They鈥檙e making good work of it, too. In mid-May, the agave plants began shooting out long, skinny stalks where flowers began to poke out.

By mid-July, one stalk was more than 14 feet tall.

鈥淲hen I get a ladder up there to look at them, it鈥檚 a little farther than I like to stretch,鈥� said John Clark, director of greenhouses for the department.

He suspects the agave, which bloom so infrequently that one species is called a 鈥渃entury plant,鈥� will bloom for only a few weeks. It鈥檚 an explosion of color.

鈥淭hey start blooming from the buds at the bottom, and you see this gorgeous, sunshiny yellow,鈥� Clark said.

He鈥檚 quick to point out that these agave plants aren鈥檛 the kind that make tequila. That somewhat dubious honor belongs to a species called blue agave (Agave azul). Instead, this bloom is a testament to the power of patience.

A former professor emeritus of linguistics named Allan Taylor first planted this garden featuring flora of the southwestern United States in the mid-to-late 1990s.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a surprise to have even one bloom, but to have two plants bloom is a really nice surprise,鈥� Clark said. 鈥淚鈥檝e been measuring them once a week just to see how much taller they鈥檝e gotten.鈥�

Decades on campus

They鈥檝e had to survive a lot, including floods, wildfire smoke and more, to get that tall. This year alone, the agave weathered a major hailstorm, which left scratches on one of them.

Clark is all the more impressed with these hardy agave because they aren鈥檛 native Colorado plants. The agave family, which is related to asparagus, includes several dozen species more commonly found in places like Mexico and the southwestern United States鈥攚arm and dry locations where the succulents can make good use of scant supplies of water.

A few agave species do grow in Colorado, however, including Parry鈥檚 agave (Agave parryi), Utah agave (Agave utahensis), New Mexico Agave (Agave neomexicana) and Harvard Agave (Agave havardiana). Clark and his colleagues are working to determine which species these plants听belong to.

The success of the plants is a fitting tribute to Taylor, who joined the CU Boulder faculty in 1964 and died in late 2022. While he studied languages professionally, Taylor was also a passionate horticulturalist who developed numerous varieties of plants through many years of fieldwork, including 鈥淭aylor鈥檚 sunburst鈥� pine trees. Several of these lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta) grow in the same garden as the agave and, true to their name, sprout tufts of bright-yellow needles from the tips of their branches.

鈥淵ou can go to many nurseries, and you'll find plants that are named after him or plants that he has named,鈥� said Clark, whose team was pleased to alert Taylor鈥檚 family that the agave were in bloom.

The bloom also brings a little bit of sadness. Once the agave finish flowering, the plants will begin to shrivel and die鈥攖his colorful event marks the end of their decades-spanning lives. But Clark and his team are already planning to grow new plants from their seeds, meaning they will continue to leave their mark on campus for years to come.

鈥淚f you plant agave in your yard,鈥� he said, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 something you鈥檒l be able to show your grandkids.鈥�