Spotting

This is an agave species. All those "leaves" up there are individual new plants waiting to fall down, root, and start another plant. Here's an example of an agave starting to flower: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/716... The original plant will die over the course of this winter. They grow for years (10 or more) and then spike once with flowers which turn into the little plants after fertilization, and then die. Some grow for so long that they are commonly called century plants, but that's an exaggeration.