Yucca gloriosa, a superb yucca for the garden

Yucca gloriosa comes to us from the southeastern United States. Although it enjoys the mild climate of the Florida and Louisiana coasts, this shrub of the Asparagaceae family is a hardy plant. It tolerates cold winters and is grown outdoors in our latitudes.

Yucca gloriosa is an upright shrub with few branches. Smaller than yucca gigantea or yucca aloifolia, it doesn't grow taller than five meters, even in the wild.

Yucca gloriosa grows in compact clumps. Over time, a single plant may develop several stems at the base. These thicken to form a greyish false trunk. With its stipe topped by a crown of leaves, the shrub then resembles a palm tree.

The tough, lanceolate leaves grow in a rosette at the top of the plant. They measure up to 70 centimetres long and only four centimetres wide. They have a sharp tip with a brown spine, and whole or serrated edges. The botanical variety has blue-green foliage. But there are hybrids and cultivars with purple or cream-edged blades.

Older specimens flower in autumn. Along a long flowering stem, panicles of fragrant flowers fall. White, sometimes streaked with purple, they are bell-shaped.

But don't count on your Yucca gloriosa to feed you. Pollination is carried out by a butterfly found only in its natural habitat. Unless you do the work yourself, you have no chance of seeing the characteristic purple, ovoid fruit.

The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked. But they are the only edible part of the shrub. The rest of the plant contains saponin. This substance is toxic to humans and animals. Ingested, it causes stomach pains and neurological disorders.