Foliage Friday - Yucca

Happy Friday*! Are you ready for another installment of Foliage Friday? I hope so since I didn't get another post in here this week to break it up! Hehe. :)

It's your friendly plant post; where I talk about a plant I love and hopefully convince you to plant it or be more knowledgeable about it.

Plant: Soapweeed, Yucca glauca

A full shot of the yucca plant

Why: Well, this sure seems like a random plant, doesn’t it? That’s good, because I want to cover a ton of different plants on Foliage Fridays. Actually, I was inspired to pick this plant because of my mom. We have recently been giving my parents’ yards a facelift. Currently, the backyard has a few holes in it. One day, she was driving to work and saw these beautiful, tall, white flowers spiking up from the ground. She immediately asked me what they were. I had seen them before, but could not remember their name! Later that week, while gardening at Stephanie’s house, she pointed out how much she loved this one plant…. And it was the same one my mom was interested in! Well, that just seemed like fate, I had to write about it! Luckily, Stephanie knew the name… the yucca.

Landscape info: Plants I am currently trying to learn more about are perennials. I haven’t given them enough attention! Usually, annuals offer a great deal of color, and bloom for a majority of the summer. And let’s face it, I love color. But as I learn more about perennials, I learn what they can offer besides consecutive years of life. The yucca starts out as a 3-4 foot clump of spiky, green, succulent leaves. In summer (June through August), it grows a 4-5 foot flowering stalk. The flower stalk contains many white, bell-shaped flowers. It is a great plant to give your garden a completely different look mid-way through the season. It offers a wonderful texture and height difference to any shorter annuals or perennials planted in the area, yet works wonderfully in a rock garden because of its spiky leaves. It is believed that the yuccas, being in the agave family, can withstand hot, arid temperatures, along with drought like temperatures. Easy maintenance! It also attracts butterflies to its white flowers.

White, bell-shaped flowers of the yucca, with its spiky leaves

Other uses: If the roots of the yucca are harvested and pulverized, you can mix them with warm water and drink it, which apparently helps with stomachaches. The juice from the succulent leaves can be used as poison for arrows and fishing. That’s not it! You can also mix the roots to make a shampoo which can help with dandruff, hair loss, and lice. A lotion can be made out of the roots, as well, for the treatment of poison ivy! Want to know why it’s called soapweed? That’s because the roots can be used to make soap, as well as the shampoo as mentioned above.

Fun facts: Sooo, if you’re a plant person, you probably have figured this one out… but the soapweed is actually not native to our area. In fact, it is not native to Illinois at all. Do you know what that means? It’s technically a weed! This plant is native to just about every state west of Illinois. It can turn invasive if not monitored while it flowers. But since our area is not known for its extreme arid temperatures, it does not get out of control. This plant has many different common names, other than soapweed. Here are a few: Great Plains yucca, Spanish bayonet, beargrass, small soapweed, and yucca. Finally, the yucca will not produce seeds every year because seed fertilization is highly dependent on the Pronuba moth. Note to self: learn about this moth!

Inside of the flowers

Thank you for tuning in this week! Hope you have a great weekend :)

*Post was written on Friday but unfortunately not posted due to lack of internet. Apologies for the 2 day delay.

Additional information found at: usda.gov