Plantae > Tracheophyta > Liliopsida > Asparagales > Asparagaceae > Yucca > Yucca baccata

Yucca baccata (Spanish Bayonet)

Synonyms: Sarcoyucca baccata (homotypic); Yucca baccata f. genuina

Wikipedia Abstract

Yucca baccata (datil yucca or banana yucca) is a common species of yucca native to the deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, from southeastern California north to Utah, east to western Texas and south to Sonora and Chihuahua. It is also reported in the wild in Colombia. The species gets its common name "banana yucca" from its banana-shaped fruit. The specific epithet "baccata" means "with berries." Banana yucca is closely related to the Mojave yucca (Y. schidigera), with which it is interspersed where their ranges overlap; hybrids between them occur.
View Wikipedia Record: Yucca baccata

Infraspecies

Yucca baccata var. baccata
Yucca baccata var. brevifolia (Attributes)

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Low
Screening - Summer [2]  Porous
Screening - Winter [2]  Porous
Bloom Period [2]  Late Spring
Drought Tolerance [2]  High
Edible [3]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Fire Tolerance [2]  None
Flower Type [3]  Hermaphrodite
Frost Free Days [2]  3 months 25 days
Fruit/Seed Abundance [2]  High
Fruit/Seed Begin [2]  Summer
Fruit/Seed End [2]  Summer
Growth Form [2]  Multiple Stem
Growth Period [2]  Spring, Summer, Fall
Growth Rate [2]  Moderate
Hazards [3]  The roots contain saponins; Whilst saponins are quite toxic to people, they are poorly absorbed by the body and so tend to pass straight through. They are also destroyed by prolonged heat, such as slow baking in an oven. Saponins are found in many common foods such as beans; Saponins are much more toxic to some creatures, such as fish, and hunting tribes have traditionally put large quantities of them in streams, lakes etc in order to stupefy or kill the fish;
Leaf Type [3]  Evergreen
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Pollinators [3]  Hand
Propagation [2]  Bare Root, Container, Seed
Root Depth [2]  6 inches (15 cm)
Seed Spread Rate [2]  Moderate
Seed Vigor [2]  High
Seeds Per [2]  22700 / lb (50045 / kg)
Shape/Orientation [2]  Erect
Structure [3]  Shrub
Usage [3]  A fibre obtained from the leaves is used for making ropes, baskets and mats; The fibre can be braided into a good quality rope; The leaves can be reduced into fibre and then made into cloth; To obtain the fibre, the terminal spine and a section of the back of the leaf are removed and pounded to free the fibre from the fleshy portion of the leaf; Another method of obtaining the fibre was to fold the leaves into sections about 10cm long. The leaves were then boiled with a small quantity of cedar ashes. When sufficiently cooked, the leaves were placed in a bowl or basket and cooled, then youths and young women would peel off the epidermis and chew the leaves, starting at one end and finishing at the other. After chewing the leaves, the fibres were separated, straightened out and hung to dry. When required for weaving, they would first be soaked in water to soften them; The whole leaf is sometimes split into sections and then tied together by square knots to make a rope; The leaf can be used as a paint brush; Leaf slivers are used, the end being pounded to reveal the fibres; The leaves have also been used to make small brushes for pottery decoration; The leaf is used in basket making; Small roots have been used in making baskets; They have been used to produce a red pattern in baskets; The leaves can be split and then woven into mats; The leaves can be split and used as a temporary string; The leaf fibre has been braided into ropes; The terminal spines have been used as needles; The dried leaves have been boiled with gum, hardened, ground into a powder then mixed with water and used to make baskets waterproof; The roots are rich in saponins and can be used crushed and then soaked in water to release the suds for use as a soap; It makes a good hair wash; A soap can also be obtained from the leaves and stems;
Vegetative Spread Rate [2]  Slow
Flower Color [2]  White
Foliage Color [2]  Green
Fruit Color [2]  Black
Fall Conspicuous [2]  Yes
Flower Conspicuous [2]  Yes
Fruit Conspicuous [2]  Yes
Height [3]  35 inches (0.9 m)
Hardiness Zone Minimum [2]  USDA Zone: 6 Low Temperature: -10 F° (-23.3 C°) → 0 F° (-17.8 C°)
Light Preference [2]  Full Sun
Soil Acidity [2]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [2]  Infertile
Water Use [2]  Low
View Plants For A Future Record : Yucca baccata

Protected Areas

Predators

Megathymus ursus (Viola’s ursine yucca giant-skipper)[4]
Megathymus yuccae (Yucca skipper)[4]
Paraputo olivaceus <Unverified Name>[5]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 3Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 4Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 5Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0