Best Of

Here's a visual of the progression after blooming; the flowers drop off in a few days and leave a little green stub, which then grows in size, somewhere between a golf ball and a tennis ball. The spikes are soft until halfway through; after that, they'll hurt you. None of the seed pods has dried and opened up yet to drop their seeds. That'll be early-to-mid October. The seeds fall to the ground and lie there through the winter, and sprout in the spring, without any intervention from a lazy old man.

Oliva V lancero for scale.