description
Yucca schidigera is a flowering plant of the Asparagaceae family.
Yucca is a
small evergreen tree capable of reaching a stature of 16 feet (5 meters). Rising from its conspicuous basal trunk is a dense crown of
spirally arranged leaves.
The plant's gray-brown bark is covered with brown dead leaves near the top,
and is increasingly irregularly rough and scaly-to-ridged closer to the ground.
The plant's thick leaves are 30–150 cm long and 4–11 cm broad at the base, concavo-convex,
and are yellow-green to blue-green in color. The rigid leaves appear long and pointy similar in shape to bayonets with their wider base tapering to a narrow top.
The bell-shaped flowers are white, sometimes tinged purple, and approximately 3–5 cm long (rarely to
7.5 cm). They form in compact, bulbous clusters 60–120 cm tall at the top of
the stem.
The fruit is an elongate berry, up to 11.5 cm long.
common names & nomenclature
Yucca is the Central and South American name for the cassava plant. It is taken from
Spanish yuca, juca (late 15c.), probably from Taino which is the native language of
Haiti.
Also known as:
yucca, mohave yucca, spanish dagger
