the.com/yucca
the desert's diva, fertilized by exactly one moth or by nobody at all
means A spiky, sword-leaved plant of the agave family, native to the arid Americas, known for its tall spikes of white flowers and its reliance on a single specialist moth for pollination.
from From Spanish 'yuca,' which the Spanish borrowed from Taíno, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean. There's a tangle worth noting: the Taíno 'yuca' actually named cassava (manioc), an entirely different plant, and early European writers muddled the two — so the desert diva we now call 'yucca' wears a name that originally belonged to a tropical root crop.
- loyal moth
- Only yucca moths pollinate it, deliberately stuffing flowers
- sword tips
- Leaves end in spines sharp enough to puncture skin
- not cassava
- Yuca the food is a totally different plant
- night bloomer
- White flowers open after dark for moths
- old soul
- Some Mojave specimens are thousands of years old
joshua tree — yucca brevifolia species native to mojave desert, california, grows up to 40 feet tall
yucca mountain — nevada nuclear waste repository site, 1,000+ metric tons of radioactive material proposed storage
spanish dagger yucca — yucca gloriosa species with sharp leaves, native to southeastern united states coast