On the way home from getting my hair shorn professionally (by the excellent Gerardo, of the Cardinal Barbershop just up the street from me — in a shop with most of the original furnishings from 43 years ago, including Gerardo) — past some drought-conscious plantings alongside Palo Alto City Hall: a plantation of gray-green succulents that looked remarkably like artichokes. At home, searching on “succulents that look like artichokes”, I got a huge pile of references to various Agave species, especially Agave parryi (common name “artichoke agave”!), and two of its varieties, var. truncata:
(#1)
and var. huachucensis (with somewhat tighter “heads” than truncata):
(#2)
