'Sheep-eating plant' blooms at Abbotsbury Gardens
The rare Puya from Chile only flowers once in more than a decade!
A South American plant that's described as 'sheep-eating' is in bloom at Dorset's Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens.
The Puya chilensis is native to the mountains of Chile, and is a rarely seen relative of the pineapple, but its ferocious spines are known to have trapped birds, small animals and even sheep!
The creatures give the plants the nutrients it needs to survive and bloom.
It takes decades for the plants to bloom with their yellow flowers, but they only last for a couple of weeks.
Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens’ Curator David Pearce says anticipation grew among the Gardens’ team, as a flowering Puya is so rare:
“The Puya’s highly specific growing requirements make it a rarely seen plant in British cultivation; with it typically only being seen in heated glasshouses. In addition to this, it typically takes more than a decade to flower, making this a much-anticipated blooming.
“Colloquially named the “sheep-eating plant”’ as it has been known to trap and “eat’ sheep, birds and other small mammals with its hooked barbs. Fortunately, none of our gardeners have succumbed to that fate! The plant has evolved this trait to deal with the nutrient-poor mountainsides in its native Chile.
“We knew it was going to flower because the flower stem began to emerge from the centre of the leaf rosette. The inflorescence - the term used for a group of flowers - grew up to 20cm a day until it reached about 3.5 metres tall, when it branched into a resplendent network of flowers with an unusual turquoise form of flowering. This year we had four inflorescences, all emerging from the same clump.”