I went for a hike today, up in the steep hills, and at an altitude of around 1,000 meters I found this Hesperoyucca whipplei just about starting to bloom. The plant is also called our Lord's candle, Spanish bayonet, Quixote yucca, or foothill yucca. Around here it’s maybe best known as chaparral yucca. Although it’s not. Not a yucca, I mean. And this one was growing in more of an interior sage brush community, which is different from chaparral. But that’s alright, H. whipplei … you do you.
That pink thing in the middle is about the size of a fist, and is the beginning of a stem … or to be precise, a peduncle… which will shoot up very quickly — it can grow 25 cm a day, and might end up measuring more than 3 meters (it’s one hell of a peduncle!), and then there will be a big, white inflorescence at the top. Some years the Southern California chaparral and sage brush hillsides are full of white torches like that. And then, after blooming, the mother plant usually dies. But not before, of course, it’s been pollinated. In the case of H. whipplei, pollination involves a moth called Tegeticula maculata in a fascinating example of mutual aid.
I once made fibers from the leaves of a H. whipplei, and then a short piece of rope from the fibers. I hung the rope on a hook in the shed, so that every time I go out there I’m reminded that the world is full of all kinds of things.
