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Agave oteroi 'Kyoto' (Japanese Fishhook Agave) – A small agave that grows slowly to about 8 inches tall and a foot wide but can be kept considerably smaller when grown in a small pot. It has broad short, gray-green leaves with a reddish-brown terminal spine and long narrow wavy recurved teeth along the leaf margins that emerge a golden color and age to a gray white. The cartilaginous leaf margins themselves age to the same color as the spines, which gives this plant a very distinctive look.
Plant in full to part sun along the coast but give some protection from afternoon sun in hot interior gardens. It has proven cold hardy to 20 F and may tolerate even colder temperatures. This is a nice plant for a small spot in the garden or as a potted specimen.
The origin of this Agave oteroi clone is a bit murky but we have built up stock on it by coring a plant we purchased from Guy Wrinkle-Exotic Plants in 2009. Given its cultivar name (Kyoto is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture on the main island of Honshu in Japan), our best guess is that it originated as a seedling in Japan from the Sierra Mixteca Agave, which for years circulated as Agave sp. FO-076, Agave titanota "Sierra Mixteca" with the Felipe Otero collection designation FO-076 and was later described as Agave oteroi by Greg Starr and Tristan Davis in the Summer 2019 issue of Cactus and Succulent Journal (Vol. 91 N. 2), making this plant's official name Agave oteroi 'Kyoto'. For more information about this and the subsequent official naming of this species, see our listing for Agave oteroi.
The information displayed on this page about Agave oteroi 'Kyoto' is based on the research we conducted about it in our nursery horticultural library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include some of our own observations made about this plant as it grows in the nursery gardens and other gardens that we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we have received from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information that will aid others to better grow it.
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