Century Plant….

My little one and I encountered this bit of desert wonderfulness on Highway 89A, on a stretch of the road called “The Mingus Highway,”  just south and west of Jerome, Arizona.  The formal name of the plant is Agave americana, but it is commonly referred to as the Century plant.  If you’d like to, you can check-out this link on Wikipedia for more information….and if you’re prefer not to visit the link, I’ll just tell you that, while it is referred to as the Century plant, it typically lives for 10-30 years and then dies after it blooms.

We saw probably half a dozen or more of the plants along the roadway, but this one was by far the freshest of the bunch…the others were either seriously late in their blooming season and had mostly wilted flowers or were already dying or dead.