Dinosaurs in the front yard

This week I have noticed that the agave common in many gardens around here, agave attenuata I believe, is flowering, if that is the word. The amazing long spikes are poking out like dinosaurs, their green flower buds and weird stringy tendrils (again I am struggling for the correct terminology here) lavish and fulsome. Maybe because from a certain angle they look to me like brontosaurus heads,

they seem like an ancient species, coming to us from another time, long long ago. I’ve been stopping to look and photograph them when I see them – they are truly gorgeous and mysterious – I want to say creatures, but that’s not right… Where did they originate? How did they work out how to grow the way they do? What’s the deal with the very long and very occasional flower spike? (The technical term for the spike is a raceme apparently.) How come so few of the many many plants that you see around are actually throwing up spikes? Will the ones in our garden ever do this? (See if you can find the pics below where you can see baby racemes just starting out.) I could look up some of the answers to this, but I will leave the mystery this time, and just enjoy the beauty and wildness of it all, how these amazing beings are here with us, the world presenting itself to us for our delectation…