Campus & community, Campus news

Botanical Garden’s Puya into action

By Kathleen Maclay

Ta-dah! The endangered Puya raimondii at the UC Botanical Garden is showing off the first of its green-and-white flowers!

Weeks after showing the early signs that blossoming was in its early developmental stages, the Puya is displaying some of what could – over the course of the next couple of months – number around 30,000 flowers.

The first beautiful flowers blossomed on the Botanical Garden's Puya this week. (Photo courtesy of the UC Botanical Garden.)

The first beautiful flowers blossomed on the Botanical Garden’s Puya this week. (Photo courtesy of the UC Botanical Garden.)

The Puya raimondii is the largest of the bromeliad family and blooms in its native Andean mountain range in Bolivia when it reaches the ripe old age of 80 to 100. For this 24-year-old Puya, at near sea level at the UC Botanical Garden, the timing is obviously a more than a little bit off.

Ultimately, sometime in the coming weeks, the Puya, will produce a spectacular flower-filled spike up to 30-feet-high and laden with up to 6 million seeds.

Another blooming Puya made quite a splash in the late ‘80s and thousands of visitors are reported to have flocked to the garden to see it.

The UC Botanical Garden is open over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

For updates on the Puya, check the UC Botanical Garden Facebook page.

The garden is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed the first Tuesday of each month. If the garden parking lot in Strawberry Canyon is full, visitors may park up the hill at the Lawrence Hall of Science. Directions to the UC Botanical Garden are online.