How Sisal Grows
If you read our last post on the plant propagation efforts we’ve made for Ciyanjano, you may be wondering where we got 1,800 new sisal (agave sisalana) starts. Well, actually these starts were vegetatively propagated.
The sisal plant has a unique design for its survival. After about 5 years a mature sisal plant will send up a pole (shoot) which flowers. The pole grows extremely fast (10-12 cm per day) and very tall (5-6 meters). As this pole reaches its maximum height is sends out branches that flower. Eventually on this one plant, as many as 2,000 bulbils can grow on these flowering stems. Bulbils are small baby plantlets that are miniature versions of its parent. It’s astonishing how the plant “mothers” thousands of its own new plants at the same time. When the formation of the bulbils are complete, they have reached a point of maturity where they fall the full 5-6 meter distance down to the ground. The mother plant then dies.
By sending a pole up so high, the sisal plant has a better chance of the small plantlets falling further away from the base of the plant. For me, the sisal plant illustrates how imaginative and creative God is and how blind I am to the wonders of His creation. Unless I make it a point to observe and investigate, I’ll never “see”. I never would have paid any interest in the life cycle of the plant if I wasn’t interested in propagating the plant myself.
Although sisal originally came from Mexico, the sisal plant is now grown commercially all over the world to make twine. In 1893 sisal bulbils were imported and introduced to British East Africa, where countries like Tanzania and Kenya produced it in large quantities. Since then, sisal has been propagated all over sub-Saharan Africa. Brazil, China and Tanzania are now the world’s biggest producers.
