The Huntington Desert Garden is one of the largest and oldest assemblages of cacti and other succulents in the world. Nearly 100 years old, it has grown from a small area on the Raymond fault scarp when in 1907-1908 William Hertrich brought in plants from local nurseries, private residences, public parks, and from collection trips to the Southwest and Mexican deserts. Today the two dozen families of succulents and other arid adapted plants have developed into a 10-acre garden display, the HuntingtonÕs most important conservation collection, a most important mission and challenge. Read full centennial story.(a href 2009-20-10-centennial.html) Yuccas in the Huntington Desert Garden Milieu
by Gary Lyons, Curator of the Desert Garden
The spiky-leaved yuccas are among the oldest plants in the Huntington landscape. Plantings dating back to 1908 and still thriving give the garden much of its character. Their bright festive panicles of white blossoms add a cheery background and accent to the symphony of spring color in the lower Desert Garden. According to the latest authorities there are 45 yucca species and 14 varieties and they are placed in the agave family. Most of the species are found in the Southwest, northern and central Mexico and Baja California. But the genus is more widespread with species found along the Atlantic seaboard, the Great Plains, into Canada, and south as far as Guatemala. Yucca blossoms, with the exception of at least one species (the rose-tinged Yucca endlichiana) are mostly creamy white. Many species have edible flower petals. Yuccas can be difficult to distinguish from similar appearing-genera, such as Agave, Hesperaloe, Dasylirion, and Nolina. Today the Huntington has about 40 species and varieties growing in the garden. Yuccas are among the Desert Garden's most heat and cold tolerant plants, with many species used in landscaping in the Midwest and northeast U. S. and even, of all places, central Europe.