Looking rather spectacular and rather prickly is our native Yucca aloifolia ‘Variegata’. This stunning Southeast US coastal native is rarely offered by nurseries primarily due to the difficulty in taking cuttings. Reportedly, the common name “Spanish bayonets” came from early Spanish settlers in Florida, who planted these as a perimeter border to ward off intruders. So, if you have unruly neighbors who like to take shortcuts through a sunny part of your property, this is an easy and attractive way to solve the problem.
Frequent in commerce here in western Washington State. Including warehouse store plant departments. Unfortunately, the leaf spot problem visible in the photo used for this post is becoming pervasive in my area.
The only leaf spot we see is on the older foliage as it senesces.
Awesome 🙂
Curious about the difficulty in taking cuttings. Is it because the plant must be beheaded? Is it more difficult for this variegated plant than other trunking yuccas?
I just read that occasionally an all-white pup could form, tho it’s not viable when separated from the mother. That would be interesting to see.
I stumbled on a pair of variegated Y aloifolia at big box, of all places. I feel quite lucky now.
Yes: Y. aloifolia ‘Variegata’ is common where I live in the Pacific Northwest with box stores as well as independent retailers stocking it every year. Flowering often takes place late in my area with spikes coming on in autumn as well as even early winter.
Is this the variety sold under the name of ‘Colorguard’ or a naturally occurring variety? I have one Yucca I purchased with that name, and some of the emerging side shoots have begun to revert to the original Yucca filamentosa color. I’ve been cutting those off in my plant, and letting only the bi-colored shoots develop, but I wondered if you knew what causes this?
Yucca ‘Color Guard’ is a selection of Yucca flaccida, not Yucca filamentosa, but virtually everyone selling it has it labeled incorrectly. It usually doesn’t revert to solid green, but obviously, you are just unlucky that you have a clone which does. Often in mass nursery production, small mutations occur like this, where the plants superficially look correct, but are prone to reversion at a higher rate. It’s remotely possibly that you could dig your clump, and carefully remove all of the section that is reverting, and it might be okay going forward, but then again, it might not. In other words, you possibly just got a lemon.
No longer published American Nurseryman printed trade periodical once had an article estimating that as much as 1/3 of nursery stock in the United States was mislabeled.
Sadly, that’s quite believable.
In the case of the one yucca, it might have started with a fading label at a large-scale production facility. The two involved species names both starting with ‘f’.