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Extreme heat in the Southwest is testing iconic desert plants like agave. The Summary Increasingly frequent and severe heat waves in the Southwest are damaging some desert plants known for ...
Rushing has a personal experience with agave plants, which can cause skin irritation, swelling, redness and sores within minutes to hours of exposure. The sap is the most irritating part of the plant.
Agave sanpedroensis is a perennial rosette-forming plant with succulent leaves, 50–70 cm tall and wide and producing abundant offsets. The leaves are stiffly upright, gray to grayish green, with conspicuous banding and white bud-imprinting, and undulate margins.
Agave leaves store the plant's water and are crucial to its continued existence. The coated leaf surface prevents evaporation. The leaves also have sharp, spiked edges. The spikes discourage predators from eating the plant or using it as a source of water and are so tough that ancient peoples used them for sewing needles. The sap is acidic ...
Agave shawii is a very slow-growing, small-to-medium-sized agave. The colorful spines on the margins of the leaves. The foliage is arranged in a rosette that measures 8 centimetres (3.1 in) to 2 metres (6.6 ft) wide. There may be numerous rosettes on top of erect to decumbent trunks that emerge from the rootstock. The foliage is glossy, colored ...
Agave takes little water but presents other challenges. The plant typically takes at least seven years to grow and is tough to harvest, and a mature plant can weigh hundreds of pounds. Once cut ...
Varieties of the species include the Nevada agave and Kaibab agave. It is an uncommon plant of the United States' desert southwest, in the states of Utah , Nevada , Arizona , and California . Although plants in some areas are threatened, overall the species is stable and is considered to be of Least Concern by the IUCN .
Agavoideae is a subfamily of monocot flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, order Asparagales.It has previously been treated as a separate family, Agavaceae. [1] The group includes many well-known desert and dry-zone types, such as the agaves and yuccas (including the Joshua tree).