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Century Plant brings excitement to Bucknell's greenhouse

A plant that only blooms once every 30 years is blooming at Bucknell University.

LEWISBURG, Pa. — There are a lot of interesting plants inside Bucknell University's greenhouse. One, in particular, has been growing here for about 30 years. It's called an Agave Americana or a Century Plant.

Bucknell University even set up a camera to live stream the blooming process.

"It mostly has just been a cluster of leaves. This is an Agave, and people might be familiar with what they look like with these long strap-like leaves and sharp tips, and that's all we've had for three decades," Chris Martine said.

But recently, that changed. The plant is starting to bloom after 30 years.

"These plants only live for 25 or 30 years. They only bloom one time in their lives, and then they die after that," Martine said.

"I think a lot of folks watched it while they were home over the holiday break, hoping that this would occur, but it waited for a bunch of us to come back to campus. I think maybe it was wanting us to be here in person," Martine said.

Nancy Frazier is a librarian at Bucknell University.

"We had been coming here about once a week on our lunch hour to see the progress of the bloom, and looking through the camera that library IT had provided during the break to watch the bloom, so we were very excited," Nancy Frazier said.

Nancy and some colleagues came to check out the century plant.

"This is just great. I mean, I knew nothing about the plant before," Frazier said.

If you'd like to see the century plant, CLICK HERE.

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