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Agave potatorum 'El Camarón' (El Camarón Butterfly Agave) - A particularly nice form of Agave potatorum with a symmetrical rosette to 2 to 3 feet tall by as wide holding heavy broad gray upright and slightly recurved leaves that have closely spaced small mammilate margins bearing red teeth and with a reddish brown terminal spine. When mature a flower spike rises 10 to 20 feet bearing light green flowers tinged with red and subtended with red bracts. This agave rarely offsets so, after maturing, which in our experience begins to occur when plants are reach about 10 years of age, it will flower (usually during the fall) and then unfortunately the entire plant declines and dies.
Plant in full sun with little irrigation required in coastal gardens but provide some supplemental irrigation in hotter inland gardens. Winter hardy to around 25 degrees.
The species Agave potatorum ranges through the semi-arid highlands between 4,000 and 7,000 feet in Oaxaca and southern Puebla. For information on the species see our listing of Agave potatorum.
This very nice selection of the Butterfly Agave comes from just east of the town of 'El Camarón', south of Oaxaca City. Seed collected of this plant was collected in 2006 and yielded one plant that we cored and propagated and ten years later we had enough to sell this very fine plant that we have named after location from where it came from. It differs from typical Agave potatorum in having a rosette that is less open and with thicker whiter gray leaves that are a bit more upright and then reflexed and with smaller mammilate projections along the margin. We continuously sold this very popular plant from when we first introduced it in 2016 until closing our nursery in 2025.
The information displayed on this page about Agave potatorum 'El Camarón' 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.
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