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Hesperoyucca whipplei
Also called Our Lord's Candle, Quixote Yucca, Spanish Bayonet, Common Yucca, Foothill Yucca
Chaparral yucca is a stemless, drought-tolerant rosette plant from southern California and Baja California that sends up a tall, fast-growing flower spike once, usually after about five years, and then dies. Grow it in full sun in sharply drained soil and leave it dry between waterings.
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 southwest communities of North America.
It is native to southern California in the United States and Baja California in Mexico, where it occurs mainly in chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and oak woodland plant communities at altitudes of 0–2,500 metres (8,200 feet). Yucca whipplei grows on the rocky slopes and washes of the chaparral area of the transverse mountains of Southern California up to approximately 1,200 m (4,000 ft) above mean sea level.
Hesperoyucca whipplei is used in xeriscaping in Southern California, but reportedly is difficult to grow outside of its native range (although it is widely available from specialist nurseries in the United Kingdom). It is extremely drought tolerant and thrives in clay soils.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Hesperoyucca whipplei by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
