Pronounciation: A-GAV-e app-LAN-ta

Hardiness zones
Sunset 12-24
USDA 8 (with protection), 9-11

Landscape Use: Medium to large scale rock gardens, cactus and succulent gardens, Mediterranean-style landscapes, large landscape borders, containers on large patios, textural accent, specimen.

Form & Character: Variable form, rosetting, round, stiff, sharp, large and imposing, dangerous, gray.

Growth Habit: Evergreen, succulent, yet fibrous perennial, monocarpic, moderate growth rate to 4- to 6-feet tall with equal spread, mostly solitary, rarely acaulescent producing basal offshoots from short underground rhizome.

Danger alert: When mature, gray agave get very large and are well-armed with needle-sharp spines.

Foliage/Texture: Numerous silvery-blue to gray-green succulent but fibrous, strap-shaped leaves to 3-feet long, rosetting, erect, linear-lanceolate, usually widest at or near the base to 6 inches, leaf margins with sharp, dark brown to black marginal teeth and a long, dark reddish-brown terminal spine that becomes greyish with age, juvenile foliage of young plants have distinct wider flattened leaves; coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Flowers brilliant, short tubular, in clusters on a 25-feet tall stalk, usually after 15 to 25 years; fruits brown, unattractive. After flowering, reproductive stalks can produce bulbils instead of fruit.

Seasonal Color: Flowers during spring.

Temperature: Tolerant

Light: Full sun or partial sun, no full shade.

Soil: Tolerant of numerous soil textures so long as soil is well drained.

Watering: Only occassional water during summer once established.

Pruning: None, except to prune the needle-like tips of the terminal leaf spines to reduce potential injury to human beings and damage to inflatable sports balls.

Propagation: Seed, basal offshoots, bulbils when they are produced on post-anthesis flower stalks.

Disease and Pests: None

Additional comments: Gray agave is not for small landscape spaces or those landscape spaces in close proximity to human traffic. Gray agave is similar to Agave parryi when young, but becomes quite a bit larger at maturity when it is sometimes confused with Agave americana. The popular cultivar 'Cream Spike' is a dwarf, small growing, variegated form with light blue-gray-green to olive green, leaves, with cream-colored edges and erect-spreading central spines that in Phoenix needs partial shade and/or protection from the western summer sun.

Ethnobotanical uses: The leaves contain strong fibres that are used for making rope, matting, coarse cloth, hunting nets, baskets, rope and sandals, and are used for embroidery of leather in a technique known as 'piteado'.