Plant in full sun in a well-drained soil with very little to no irrigation required and is cold hardy to around 10° F. A very decorative attractive agave that makes and excellent potted or dry garden specimen.

This plant was long called Agave ferdinandi-regis and considered to be a form or synonym of Agave victoriae-reginae as listed in Joaquin Thiede's treatment published in the first edition of Urs Eggli's Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants; Monocotyledons but in comparison with typical Agave victoriae-reginae it has a more open rosette with fewer and larger leaves, less bud imprinting and instead of silver colored margins has dark reddish brown edges. It also often has multiple small spines subtending the large terminal spine, a feature we have never seen on Agave victoriae-reginae. The Agave victoriae-reginae race comes from the Mexican States of Coahuila, Durango and Nuevo León though the plants usually associated with this form come from the Saltillo area in Coahuila. The image used in Howard Scott Gentry's “Agave of North America” for Agave victoriae-reginae, taken at Saltillo with Agave asperrima (then called A. scabra), is of this form and Gentry notes that the neotype of Agave victoriae-reginae is from this area (Neotype Gentry, Barclay & Arguella 20043 DES, MEXU, US. 12-16 miles NE of Saltillo, Coahuilla, along the road to Monterey, June 10-July 5, 1963; elevation 4,000-5,000 feet, shrub and succulent desert on limestone). From a nearby site just northeast of Ramos Arizpe at 5100 feet in elevation, at a location sometimes referred to as “the chicken ranch”, collections were made of at least two naturally occurring hybrids with this "ferdinandi-regis" plant as one parent and Agave asperrima and Agave lechugilla as the other. The popular Agave 'Sharkskin' is one such hybrid with Agave asperrima – likely collected multiple times from this location. The plant called Agave x pumila another plant considered to be such a hybrid.

To further confuse the issue the old species name of this plant was often spelled as “fernandi-regis” as this was how Gentry listed it (as a synonym with Agave victoriae-reginae) but Alwin Berger originally described the plant as Agave ferdinandi-regis in 1915 monograph “Die Agaven”. More recently in 2011 a team of Mexican botanists (Gonzalez-Elizondo, M.S.; Gonzalez-Elizondo, M.; Lopez-Enriquez, I.L., Resendiz-Rojas, L.; Tena-Flores, J.A. and Retana-Renteria, F.I.) revised this complex to now recognize four distinct taxa (3 species and one subspecies) with this form reverting back to the Agave nickelsiae, a name it was described as by the French botanist Robert Roland-Gosselin (1854-1925) in Revue Horticole 67: 579-580 in 1895. Roland-Gosselin named the plant in honor of Anna Nickels, a Texan plant collector who in the 1800's collected many plants in Mexico, including this plant that now bears her name. This name has priority since it predates Berger's name "ferdinandi-regis" by 20 years and so we now list it by this name but will likely always think of it as Agave ferdinandi-regis and we continue to list its common name as "King of the Agaves".

This plant is also sometimes marketed under the name Pinguino but we have no idea where this name comes from. Our plants from seed collected off of a plant that bloomed in the Santa Barbara garden of the late Jim and Sally Prine in March 2006 and we sold it for 5 years after this time but sadly longer have this sculptural plant it in production. 

The information displayed on this page about Agave nickelsiae is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.