This silversword planted along the road up Mauna Kea is beginning to develop flowering stalks from three of its rosettes. (One at top center and a more obvious pair on the right) Most wild silverswords will only have a single large rosette, which flowers once before the plant dies. Multiple rosettes are a common characteristic of nursery raised plants, or of plants that suffered browsing damage as they grew. Each rosette flowers and dies independently, but each inflorescence of a multiple-rosette plant is smaller (and possibly less fertile?) than that of the large single-rosette plants.