WILD DATE. SPANISH BAYONET.
Yucca Mohavensis, Sargent. Lily Family.
Trunk.—Usually simple; rarely exceeding fifteen feet high; six or eight inches in diameter; naked, or covered with refracted dead leaves, or clothed to the ground with the living leaves. Leaves.—Linear-lanceolate; one to three feet long; one or two inches wide; rigid; margins at length bearing coarse recurved threads. Flowers.—In short-stemmed or sessile, distaff-shaped panicles, a foot or two long; pedicels eventually drooping, twelve to eighteen lines long. Perianth.—Broadly campanulate. Segments.—Six; thirty lines long; six to twelve wide. Stamens.—Six; six to nine lines long; filaments white, club-shaped. Ovary.—Oblong; white; an inch or two long, including the slender style. Stigmas three. Fruit.—Cylindrical; three or four inches long; pendulous, pulpy. Syn.—Yucca baccata, Torr. Hab.—Southern California, from Monterey to San Diego; coast and inland.
The genus Yucca comprises sixteen or eighteen species, and reaches its greatest development in Northern Mexico. Three species are to be found within our borders, two of which are arborescent, Y. arborescens, and Y. Mohavensis. Considerable confusion has hitherto reigned among the species, but they are now better understood.
They are all valuable to our Indians as basket and textile plants, and are useful to them in many other ways.
Owing to the structure of the flowers, self-fertilization seems impossible, and scientists who have made a study of the subject say that these plants are dependent upon a little white, night-flying moth to perform this office for them. This little creature goes from plant to plant, gathering the pollen, which she rolls up into a ball with her feet. When sufficient has been gathered, she goes to another plant, lays her egg in its ovary, and before leaving ascends to the stigma and actually pushes the pollen into it, seeming to realize that unless she performs this last act, there will be nothing for her progeny to eat. This seems an almost incredible instance of insect intelligence; but it is a well-authenticated fact.
Yucca Mohavensis, commonly called "wild date," or "Spanish bayonet," is more widely distributed within our borders than either of our other species. Its large panicle of overpoweringly fragrant white waxen bells is a striking object wherever seen. On the coast this yucca is often stemless, but in the interior, where it is more abundant, it rises to a considerable height, and culminates upon the Mojave Desert, where the finest specimens are found.
The fruit, which ripens in August and September, turns from green to a tawny yellow, afterward becoming brownish purple, and eventually almost black. This has a sweet, succulent flesh, and, either fresh or dried, is a favorite fruit among the Indians. Dr. Palmer writes that this is one of the most useful plants to the Indians of New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California. They cut the stems into slices, beat them into a pulp, and mix them with the water in washing, as a substitute for soap.
The leaves are parched in ashes, to make them pliable, and are afterward soaked in water and pounded with a wooden mallet. The fibers thus liberated are long, strong, and durable, and lend themselves admirably to the weaving of the gayly decorated horse-blankets made by the tribes of Southern California. They also make from it ropes, twine, nets, hats, hair-brushes, shoes, mattresses, baskets, etc.