2-982-474 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

American Aloe in Bloom in the Gardens of the Royal Botanic Society, Regent's Park, [London], 1858. '...a rare spectacle in our clime...[the plant] is supposed to be now about one hundred and twenty years old. Its height may be about ten or twelve feet, with a foliage by no means luxuriant...On the 12tn of June the flower-spike made its first appearance, and then grew very rapidly, and the whole now presents much of the form of a candelabrum, bearing flowers to the extent of about 3500. The first portion expanded about the 8th of September...Agave Americana, or the American aloe, is a plant which, when full grown, has a short, cylindrical, woody stem, which is terminated by hard, fleshy, spiny, sharp-pointed, bluish-green leaves, about six feet long, and altogether resembling those of the arborescent aloes...Having acquired its full growth, it finally produces its gigantic flower-stem, after which it perishes. This stem sometimes is as much as forty feet high, and is surrounded with a multitude of branches arranged in a pyramidal form, with perfect symmetry, and having on their points clusters of greenish-yellow flowers, which continue to be produced for two or three months in succession'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.