Yucca brevifolia
Origin: California
Improvement status: Wild
Seeds per packet: ~10
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
The iconic, beloved Joshua tree is the tallest species of yucca in the world. It's also a keystone species in its arid Mojave and Sonoran Desert home, creating food and habitat for countless other species. So pivotal is its role on the landscape that there's an entire national park named for the plant (Redwoods, Sequoia, and Saguaro National Parks are the only others named after their most famous plants, unless you also count Petrified Forest). The Joshua tree is called "hunuvat chiy'a" or "humwichawa" by the indigenous Cahuilla people, and is also called "izote de desierto" in Spanish ("desert dagger"). Like other yuccas, its flowers are pollinated by tiny white moths called yucca moths.
Strikingly beautiful, of course, but Joshua trees are each like little supermarkets in the desert — and for human beings as much as for other animals — with edible flowers, fruits, seeds, and young flower stalks (which resemble the shoots of its cousin asparagus!). Indigenous peoples consumed the plant in a variety of ways: fruits were baked or boiled then eaten, seeds were ground into flour and mixed with flour from other plant species, then moistened with water and the resulting paste was kneaded into cakes and dried. People utilized the plant for a variety of other purposes too, with the woody dead plants used as building material, leaf fibers used to bind and manufacture sandals, and root sheaths woven into baskets (to add reddish-brown designs).
Joshua trees grow very quickly for a desert species. Seedlings may grow at an average rate of 3 inches per year in their first 10 years, then only about 1.5 inches per year after that. The trunk consists of thousands of small fibers and lacks annual growth rings, making determining a tree's age difficult. They have a top-heavy branch system, and a broad root system, with roots in one case found 36 feet from the nearest Joshua tree. Once they survive to maturity, they can live for several hundred years. Though 20 or 30 feet is considered tall for a J-tree, the tallest known tree reached a height of 80 feet tall! New plants are born from seed, but in some populations new stems grow from underground rhizomes that spread out around the parent.
Our California-grown seed comes from Sheffield's Seeds in Locke, NY.
GROWING TIPS: Joshua trees of course prefer desert environments, but they can survive winter temperatures down to USDA Zone 6. In fact, they won't fruit unless exposed to cold temperatures in the winter. Seeds need no special treatment to germinate, but may benefit from 24 hours of soaking in water before planting. Sow seed 1/4" deep.
