agave

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Still looking - can't find my book collection. I think they're still in boxes... grrr

Well everyone should be comfortable with a suggestion before they adopt it! I often spend hours on just one spotting :-) Good Luck!

Thank you S Frazier! I am more than aware(check out Bandon Oregon's stands of European common gorse) of plants being carried by design/accident around the world. Given that Tikal is a Mayan historic and nature preserve, I'm pretty sure any glaring non native would have been removed. I could be wrong, of course.

I am leaning toward Tradescantia although I need to look through several books I have on succulents before I"m willing to commit to the ID. While it could just be the growing conditions at Tikal, the pictures show me a plants whose leaves are not quite as substantial as the ones I saw(having once been a collector, both my mom and I spent some time looking closely at the clump that was growing there), both in width and thickness of the blades. O noticed also that they mentioned leaves up to 1 foot, and height up to 2 foot, which assumes a draecana or yucca type stem, which none of these had(again, growing conditions or landscape maintenance could explain that) Doing research on tradescantia, I was interested to find it is a relative of the houseplant commonly known as Wandering Jew, and indeed the photos of the flowers resemble the flowers of Wandering Jews as I remember them.

I plan on going through my old books(when I find them) and doing a bit more research, which I usually do if I feel funny about an identification. I checked your page and must say, I'm jealous of your living in the tropics!

Yes, it is a synonym apparently, as I noted in my previous comment including link. But Rhoeo is not the same as Rohdea.

Hello! Most ornamental (as well as edible) tropical plants have been carried by design or chance across the tropics. So that's not so much an issue because anything can be anywhere when it comes to tropical plants. That is just for community wide information. :-) Rohdea japonica is the sole species of the genus Rohdea and this spotting does not look like it. (Rhodea is a genus of snails, sometimes incorrectly applied to the plant). My own spotting of the plant I'm calling Tradescantia spathacea is here http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/130... It is confusingly sometimes called Rhoeo spathacea http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/node/365 It also has varieties http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/173... It seems purple agave is easier to find as a painting than a photograph but here are some images http://www.cathby.co.za/agavep.htm http://spikyobsession.blogspot.com/2011/... and this one labeled agave but which I think is Tradescantia spathacea http://www.flickr.com/photos/wineholio/3...

Rhodea(rohdea) is an asian species and tradescantia is a S American one

The tradescantia looks much closer, although some pictures show them on a stalk, and the leaves of mine looked a bit more substantial, although that could be growing conditions, I suppose

http://eol.org/pages/523765/media

here is one similar, but lacking the purple underneath the leaves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agave_...

Thank you for the suggestion, but looking at photos of Manch lily, I can say definitely not the same. I use to collect succulents and cacti and had many different agaves. I'm sure it is an agave.