Yucca gigantea giant yucca, spineless yucca

Not attaining gigantic proportions on campus (unlike Y. filifera), though perhaps not given enough time to, yet, to be fair. Another name sometimes used, equally vivid, is Y. elephantipes, meaning elephant’s foot, indicating the swollen base. With great maturity, however, the basal expansion pushes the bounds of that metaphor. Clumps with multiple trunks are scattered across the Papua New Guinea garden, starting from its main northeast entrance. Mixed in is another trunked monocot, Cordyline australis, which also doesn’t have spines on its leaves. Thus, both can be deemed safe for sometimes crowded garden pathways. (Needless to say, the Arizona Garden eschews this visitor-friendly approach.) It differs from the cordyline by its swollen base and its tougher leaves, which do not droop as readily. The cordyline’s stem has a subtly checkered pattern. Certainly the flowers, when they come, are a world apart, the yucca’s bell-shaped and drooping, like those of many other yuccas, and the cordyline’s much tinier, arranged on long spikes.

A sizeable clump grows on the northeast corner of Mayfield Avenue and Cedro Way, and in Palo Alto at 1499 Edgewood Drive on the right corner. A spectacular thicket is on the left corner of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose.