Beaked Yucca (Yucca rostrata)

   

• Common English Names: Beaked Yucca
• Common Spanish Names: Soyate, Palmita
• Scientific Name: Yucca rostrata
• Family: Asparagaceae (formerly Agavaceae) (Asparagus Family)
• Geographic Range: Southeastern Brewster County in Texas, adjacent Coahuila in Mexico.
• Description: Single, erect (6' to 12'), semi-succulent trunk, often multiple headed and arborescent (tree-like), with numerous smooth, narrow, flexible, sharply terminated, bluish, gray-green (glaucous) leaves with horny, lemon yellow, micro-serrated margins, radiating outward to form a hemispheric crown which sometimes in mature silhouette appears shallowly indented/constricted across the middle. Dried leaves persist and reflex down neatly and tightly to form an attractive skirt protecting the trunk.
• Landscape Usage: Widely used as an attractive landscape accent plant across Texas, to the point of disruption of the natural communities where mature plants are being extensively harvested from the wild. Reasonably sized, seed grown specimens are, however, commercially available.
• Notes: Yucca rostrata is perhaps just a larger southern variant of Yucca thompsoniana, a generally smaller plant with shorter, stiffer, narrower, yellowish-green leaves found more to north and east of Yucca rostrata. Closely related, the two forms easily intergrade and young plants and even populations are often difficult to satisfactorily separate. As a result, many botanists consider Yucca rostrata a synonym and merge these plants under Yucca thompsoniana.

Last Update: 20 Sep 2013