(George) Hi, I'm George Ferguson.
I'm the collections manager
at the University of Arizona Herbarium,
which is a plant collection there.
I'm standing next to a Palmer Agave.
It's called Agave palmeri.
That's a scientific name.
And this grows in the borderlands region of Arizona,
from southwestern New Mexico,
across Arizona, commonly around the upper grasslands in
the Nogales area, over towards Bisbee, in the Mule Mountains
and in the sky islands around in northern Sonora.
This is pollinated by a nectar feeding bat
called the Lesser Long Nose Bat.
And it occurs in this area in the summer only
its migratory. Comes up from central Mexico, follows
the blooming cardon and saguaro and organ pipe cactus along
the coast of Sonora, comes up into Arizona in early summer.
But by the time this agave begins to bloom,
those bats are over here in southern Arizona
and southwestern New Mexico,
utilizing this as their primary food source during the summer.
And so there's a nice
mutualistic relationship between this plant and the bat.
[bees buzzing]
As this agave begins to bloom,
the lower leaves that stored starch during the winter.
All that energy goes into production of the stalk.
The leaves will dry out and die.
This plant won't live much longer.
It's on its way out.
Blooms once and dies.
The Palmer Agave
is one of four species of agave in this part of Arizona
that have these paniculata branching stalks.
These produce capsules after the flower is pollinated.
The capsules produce seeds.
This rarely ever produces a side offset as well.
It's one of the characteristics of the Palmer Agave.
As you get up
towards the Catalina mountains, in the Rincon Mountains
from there north up into central Arizona
is a very closely related agave called the Golden Flower Agave.
Agave chrysantha.
It blooms about the same time slightly earlier,
but the flowers are bright orange, gold and yellow flowers.
Whereas the Palmer Agave has kind of a dull, pinkish
maroon tinge to a cream colored flower.
And there's a hybrid area between about Oracle
and the Rincon Mountains, which includes
the Catalina Mountains,
where these two species, the Palmer Agave on the south
and the Golden Flower Agave
on the north, come together and produce potentially hybrids
or at least some confusion about identity.
The Golden Flower Agave produces a lot of nectar,
and that impressed me when I was able to shake it
and have a rain of nectar fall on me in the daytime
with all the visiting insect pollinators there.
I guess I'll be out of view for a while here.
Now here's a Golden Flower Agave.
Still blooming with the last
five panicles and even a few buds at the top.
Some mammal has tried to climb this and probably did maybe
a ring tail cat or a fox
probably trying to get the nectar.
My interest in these plants
and the
mutualistic relationships of these plants with animals is
something that takes me outdoors and get to see it firsthand.
Always a surprise.
It's just something else that's new.
Every time you go out, you learn something new.
[camera shutter sound]
You know, there's so much out there.
It's mind boggling the diversity that you see in plants
and animals on Earth.
When you start really studying,
looking at it, it's just amazing.