Yucca gloriosa

Trunk-forming yuccas are an exotic addition to dry xeriscape gardens which consists of solely trees, shrubs, and perennials that tolerate or even require complete drought for long periods and where watering is banned. Desert garden is another word often used since most of these plants come from the desert areas in Central America – from the deserts of the southwestern states of the USA to Mexico. Spanish dagger also belongs among tree yuccas, however, its trunk grows perhaps at the slowest pace.

Spanish dagger comes from coastal parts of S.E. USA (North Carolina to Florida) where it naturally grows on sandy sites, exposed to wind, drought, and heat. It can easily by confused with Adam’s needle (yucca filamentosa) whose leaves are much softer while Spanish dagger makes stiff and leathery blades. They are evergreen, 40-60 cm long and 3-4 cm wide, medium green with blue-green frosting, and pointed with a sharp tip. They remain beautiful for several years and then bottom leaves are best removed.

Its flowers appear very late in the season – often 3 months later than on Adam’s needle, in late summer and autumn. They are large, beige to creamy white bells grouped in massive, upright panicles produced along a thick stem reaching about 1.5 m tall in C.E. climate and up to 2.5 m in its native habitat.

Yuccas look great if they are placed in a landscape where they will contrast with other plants in the garden and where their unusual architecture will complement the exotic atmosphere. If you are making a xeriscape garden, use a lot of various gravel, pebbles, and sand instead of mulch to cover the ground, and enhance the exotic feeling with plants of similar needs such as hardy agaves, cacti, or other drought-loving plants. It will help create a perfect Mediterranean-style landscape combined with other macchia-type plants such as arbutus, phillyrea, quercus ilex and quercus suber.

Yucca is an unpretentious plant that will grow in almost any well-drained soil of preferably neutral to alkaline pH. Spanish dagger needs free-draining soil, and it pays off to create a raised bed filled with gravel, grit, sand, and just a little bit of substrate where any water (from rain, irrigation, melting snow) will never linger. Give it full sun, water it after transplanting and then stay from watering forever. Under these growing conditions you can rely on its hardiness down to -24 °C without any protection.

Last update 03-03-2024