Visitors to St Andrews Botanic Garden are being left amazed by a cactus that is reaching for the skies and showing no sign of stopping.
Last month staff at the popular tourist venue had to remove a pane of glass from the roof of the cactus house to accommodate the rapidly-ascending dasylirion lieophyllum.
But the flower stalk has defied all expectations by continuing to grow and is now stretching several feet out of its home, taking aback even experienced garden director James Hearsum.
He said: “The plant hit the glass ceiling a month ago so we took the pane out and let it grow.
“All of a sudden it has shot up 15 feet through the glass ceiling, and it’s done that in basically four weeks.
“It’s pretty astonishing because it’s far, far bigger than we expected.
“The literature we have said it could have a 15-foot flower spike but this is 25 feet and growing.
“To be honest, we haven’t managed to get up a ladder to measure the thing because it is very spiky.”
The cactus has not flowered in 40 years but staff expect it will do so over the next few weeks.
The stalk should fall over after it has flowered, with flowers set to emerge near the tip.
Until then, Mr Hearsum reckons the sky is the limit.
“Apparently, Kew Gardens in London are making a big fuss because their one has just gone through their roof, but we think we’re doing rather better here,” he said.