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Yucca baccata
Also called Spanish bayonet, Datil yucca
Banana yucca is a desert yucca native to the southwestern US and northern Mexico, grown for its blue-green spiky leaves and banana-shaped fruit. It needs full sun, very well-drained soil and little water.
Yucca baccata (datil yucca or banana yucca, also known as Spanish bayonet and broadleaf yucca) is a common species of yucca native to the deserts of the Southwestern United States and three states in Northern Mexico.
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 Yucca schidigera, the Mojave yucca, with which it is interspersed where their ranges overlap; hybrids between them occur.
Banana yuccas is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The larger part of its range is in the US where it grows in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In Mexico it is found in three states, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila. The plant is known from the Great Basin, the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts, plus the Arizona/New Mexico Mountains ecoregion and lower, southern parts of the Rocky Mountains. It can be found in several habitat types including Pinyon-Juniper, desert grassland, Creosote bush scrub, sagebrush, and ponderosa pine colonies at elevations generally between 1,500 and 2,500 m (4,900 and 8,200 ft).
The young flower stalks can be cooked and eaten, with the tough outer rind discarded. The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked, in the latter case resembling sweet potato.
Aloe yucca · Narrowleaf yucca · Joshua tree · Adam's needle · Weak-leaf yucca · Giant yucca · Soapweed yucca · Curve-leaf yucca · Moundlily yucca · Mojave yucca · Schott's yucca · Torrey's yucca
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Yucca baccata 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.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
