10" Chaparral Yucca 'Joshua Tree'

CARE Chaparral yucca (Hesperoyucca whipplei) is a conspicuous native plant of dry rocky slopes in coastal sage scrub and chaparral. It produces a flamboyant cluster of purple-tinged white flowers atop a long stalk, giving rise to imaginative names such as Our Lord’s candle, quixote plant and Spanish bayonet, a name it shares with the other yucca in the area, Mojave yucca (Yucca schidigera). After several years of growth, chaparral yucca blooms once, then dies. Chaparral yucca is a perennial that grows 8-10 feet from  a dense basal rosette of stiff, strap-shaped, gray-green leaves. The tough, leathery leaves are one to three feet long, fibrous, and tipped with a sharp spine. The margin has tiny but sharp serrations. Fragrant white or purple-tinged flowers appear between five and eight years of age, in a large, conspicuous cluster at the top of one long, unbranched stalk, several feet long. The flower stalk grows very quickly, four to six inches (10-15 cm) per day.174 Larger flower clust