Blue agave

Agave tequilana, commonly called blue agave (agave azul) or tequila agave, is an agave plant that is an important economic product of Jalisco state of Mexico, due to its role as the base ingredient of tequila. The high production of inulin in the core of the plant is the main characteristic that makes it suitable for the preparation of alcoholic beverages. The tequila agave is native to the states of Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit, Michoacán, and Aguascalientes in Mexico. The plant favors altitudes of more than 1,500 metres (5,000 ft) and grows in rich and sandy soils. Blue agave plants grow into large succulents, with spiky fleshy leaves, that can reach over 2 metres (7 ft) in height. Blue agaves sprout a stalk when they are about five years old. These stalks can grow an additional 5 metres (16 ft), and they are topped with yellow flowers. The stalk is cut off from commercial plants so the plant will put more energy into the heart. The flowers are pollinated by the greater long-nosed bat, as well as insects and hummingbirds, and produce several thousand seeds per plant, many of them sterile. The plant then dies. Cultivated plants are reproduced by planting the previously removed shoots; this has led to a considerable loss of genetic diversity in cultivated blue agave. It is rarely kept as a houseplant, but a 50-year-old blue agave in Boston grew a 9 m (30 ft) stalk requiring a hole in the greenhouse roof and flowered in the summer of 2006.