Yucca schidigera
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Yucca schidigera Mojave yucca |
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| Flowering plant, Palm Canyon, California | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Monocots |
| Order: | Asparagales |
| Family: | Asparagaceae |
| Subfamily: | Agavoideae |
| Genus: | Yucca |
| Species: | Y. schidigera |
| Binomial name | |
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Yucca schidigera Roezl ex Ortgies |
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Yucca schidigera, also known as the Mojave yucca or Spanish dagger, is a flowering plant that is native to the Mojave Desert, Chihuahuan Desert and Sonoran Desert of southeastern California, Baja California, New Mexico, southern Nevada and Arizona.
This yucca typically grows on rocky desert slopes and creosote desert flats between 300–1,200 metres (980–3,940 ft) altitude, rarely up to 2,500 metres (8,200 ft). They thrive in full sun and in soil with excellent drainage. It also needs no summer water. It is related to the Banana yucca (Yucca baccata), which occurs in the same general area; hybrids between the two are sometimes found.
Yucca schidigera is a small evergreen tree growing to 5 metres (16 ft) tall, with a dense crown of spirally arranged bayonet-like leaves on top of a conspicuous basal trunk. The bark is gray-brown, being covered with brown dead leaves near the top, becoming irregularly rough and scaly-to-ridged closer to the ground. The leaves are 30–150 cm long and 4–11 cm broad at the base, concavo-convex, thick, very rigid, and yellow-green to blue-green in color.
The flowers are white, sometimes having a purple tinge, bell-shaped, 3–5 cm long (rarely to 7.5 cm), produced in a compact, bulbous cluster 60–120 cm tall at the top of the stem. The fruit is an elongate berry, up to 11.5 cm long.
The fibers of the Yucca schidigera leaves were used by Native Americans to make rope, sandals, and cloth. The flowers and fruit could be eaten and the black seeds were ground into a flour. The roots were used to make soap.
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Wikipedia