Showing posts with label Yucca glauca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yucca glauca. Show all posts

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Small Soapweed, Yucca glauca, repost

Here is another repost from 2013: Small Soapweed, Yucca glauca

Yucca glauca in flower
Yucca glauca in flower
     Standing like candles in the prairie, flowering soapweed yuccas make a handsome display.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Plant Story: small soapweed, Yucca glauca

Yucca glauca in flower
Yucca glauca in flower
     Standing like candles in the prairie, flowering soapweed yuccas make a handsome display.

A young Yucca glauca
A young Yucca glauca.
You could cover all but the
outer tips of the leaves by
setting down a pop can. 
     Soapweed yucca, Yucca glauca  (asparagus family, Asparagaceae) is found from Canada to Mexico across the central U.S., in areas that before settlement were grasslands.

   Like other yuccas, Y. glauca has a rosette of leaves and can live many years. The plants start as tiny rosettes of short thin leaves and as the plant gets older, the leaves get more numerous and longer.

  The leaves are tough and fibrous, with a sharp point at the tip. Cattle generally avoid eating the leaves. Biologists generally avoid walking where the leaves will stab their legs. The evening volleyball game at Cedar Point Biological Station featured the phrase "stucka by a yucca" for players who ran heedlessly after a stray ball into the plants surrounding the improvised volleyball court.