Angiosperms (Flowering Plants) • Earth.com

Chaparral yucca

(Hesperoyucca whipplei)

galery
en

Description

Hesperoyucca whipplei (syn. Yucca whipplei), the chaparral yucca, our Lord's candle, Spanish bayonet, Quixote yucca or foothill yucca, is a species of flowering plant closely related to, and formerly usually included in, the genus Yucca. It is native to southern California, United States and Baja California, Mexico, where it occurs mainly in chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and oak woodland plant communities at altitudes of 0–2500 m. It produces a stemless cluster of long, rigid leaves which end in a sharp point. The leaves are 20–90 cm (rarely to 125 cm) long and 0.7–2 cm wide, and gray-green in color. The leaf edges are finely saw-toothed. The single inflorescence grows extremely fast, and reaches 0.9–3 m tall, bearing hundreds of elliptical (bell shaped) white to purplish flowers 3 cm diameter on a densely branched panicle up to 70 cm broad, covering the upper half of the inflorescence. The fruit is a dry winged capsule, which splits open at maturity to release the seeds. The plant takes several (usually 5+) years to reach maturity and flower, at which point it usually dies. Most subspecies produce offshoots from the base, so that although the parent plant flowers and dies, a cluster of clones around its base continue to grow and reproduce. It may also grow back from its base after much of its foliage has been scorched off by the wildfires that frequent its range.

Taxonomic tree:

Domain:
Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Magnoliophyta
Class: Liliopsida
Order:Asparagales
Family:Asparagaceae
Genus:Hesperoyucca
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