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ID: Yucca? SOLVED Beschorneria yuccoides


DaveO

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This plant was in our garden when we moved here three years ago and flowered for the first time last year. None of our friends or any our reference books have been able to tell us what it is. The flowers are mainly green with red edges.

Visible light

post-28-0-14863300-1422412083.jpg

 

UV light

post-28-0-90302900-1422412099.jpg

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It might be some kind of Agave. Are the edges of the leaves spiney?

 

Yuccas typically have white (white-ish) flowers.

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It does look Beschorneria like. But that is a Mexican plant, not Australian.

Of course, Dave's plant could be imported.

 

Added: Agave & yucca are also meso-american too - as I just looked up. So nevermind that observation about Mexican plants. :D Dave's plant must be imported !

 

Added: When I saw similar plants growing in the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, they were in the Agave area. Although that could be a broad characterization.

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Sorry, I should have said that it wasn't Australian, or at least I would be pretty sure that it wasn't. The edges of the leaves are quite smooth, not spiny.
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OK, so not Agave (not spiny edged) and not Yucca (not white/ish flowers).

 

I think John has the best candidate so far with the Beschorneria suggestion.

 

******

 

Added: While not an authoritative source, Flickr might give you some leads if you search for Beschorneria.

LINK: https://www.flickr.com/search?text=Beschorneria

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We searched for John's suggestion and the photos do look like that's the answer, it may be a selection or cultivar for the nursery trade here. We looked in our "Botanica" (which we got as the annual freeby with our 'Weekly Times' subscription some years ago) and it didn't have a photo of that species but the description sort of fitted. So, thanks John, you were right on the money.

Dave

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Lucky guess, interesting specimen given your location. If it is anything like Yucca it may be troublesome so near a structure. back in the 70's one cracked the foundation wall of my parents house! I dug it up several times before I finally eradicated the cursed thing.
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Thanks for the warning John. The bed it's in seems quite hard and dry so it may be struggling to become a problem. I jokingly called it a Triffid and we all know how they turned out :D

Dave

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Dave, your query helped me too because I have photographs of an unidentified Triffid from a demonstration garden near a Furnace Creek hotel in Death Valley. I had easily lumped into the agave/yucca family, but could not get further. Then forgot about it of course. Now I think it is one of these Beschorneria fellows.

 

So John thank you also from me for that Bes suggestion.

 

BTW, my plant is not particularly spectacular in UV, but I suppose we can't always have UV glory. :D

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Glad to help, just a lucky shot really, I enjoy trying to solve such queries. The WikiPee (sorry) says Agavoideae is a subfamily that was previously treated as a separate family, Agavaceae.

Chase, M.W.; Reveal, J.L. & Fay, M.F. (2009), "A subfamilial classification for the expanded asparagalean families Amaryllidaceae, Asparagaceae and Xanthorrhoeaceae", Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 161 (2): 132–136, doi:

So, Andrea, your initial consideration of Agave seems very much in the right direction.

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The Plant People are always moving this stuff around. Hard to keep up with it. It's likely that DNA analysis has caused quite a lot of this reorganization - and rightly so, of course.

 

Hey John, if you like to solve floral mysteries, I've got one here in the ID section which I have never figured out!! From time to time, I spend a couple of hours searching the 'net to no avail. The flower is obviously a monocot. Seems like a Tulip or an Iris or some such. But there are a LOT of similarly shaped exotics out there not in Liliaceae or Iridaceae, so who knows.

 

LINK: http://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php/topic/358-id-purple-carmine-stripes/

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Oh my, if you can't ID it then I have no chance. The color is very reminiscent of Hibiscus but the flower head is also somewhat reminiscent of Geranium.

It looks like what ever it is it is not fully open and without any leaves I see you have quite a puzzle there.

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